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MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



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BY 



WILLIAM H. H. MUEEAY, 

PASTOR OP PARK STREET CHURCH, BOSTON- 




BOSTON: 
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 

1870. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

FIELDS,. OSGOOD, & CO., 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



PEEFACE. 

\ T/ITH the exception of a few verbal altera- 
tions, these discourses are now given to 
the public in the precise form in which they 
were delivered. Prepared as they were while 
the writer was under the pressure of continual 
duties, — in weariness often, and mid many 
distractions, — he is sensible of their literary 
imperfections. He laments most that the 
truths he aimed to inculcate suffer because of 
the weakness of the utterance. 

W. H. H. M. 

Boston, March, 1870. 



CONTENTS. 



-♦- 



SERMON I. 

Pagb 

The Tenderness of Gtod 1 

SERMON II. 
The Union of Moral Forces 23 

SERMON III. 
The Relation of Belief to Practice ... 47 

SERMON IV. 
To Young Men 71 

SERMON V. 
Burden-Bearing 95 

SERMON YI. 
Nearness of G-od 118 

SERMON VII. 
Divine Friendship 140 



VI CONTENTS. 

SERMON VIII. 
Hope for the Fallen . . . . . .162 

SERMON IX. 
The Ministry of the Word 182 

SERMON X. 
The Church, — Its Object and Capacity . . 200 

SERMON XI. 
The Power of Cities 222 

SERMON XII. 
The Moral Condition of Boston, and how to Im- 



prove IT 



244 



SEEMON I. 

THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 
" A bruised reed shall He not break." — Matthew xii. 20. 

THE world is hard, — hard in its policies, feel- 
ings, and acts. Its judgments are harsh, and 
its penalties are cruel. Socrates it poisoned, and 
the Messiah it slew. 

We may differ in our opinions as to the cause 
and origin of this state. You may have your views, 
I may have mine; but we shall not. differ as to the 
result. Each mind, advancing along its own path 
of reason and observation, comes to and halts at the 
same spot. The world is hard : in respect to that 
we agree. Its very religions have inoculated it with 
an evil virus, — made it dogmatic, unmerciful, and 
fierce. In India, a woman's hope of heaven lies 
over the funeral-pyre of her husband, and from 
slavery here she passes through smoke and flame 
to servitude hereafter. Maternal affection — that 
holiest instinct of the human breast — is converted 
into an engine of destruction, and the arms which 
should protect fling the babe into the waters of the 



2 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

Ganges. Every faith lias had its martyrs, every 
creed been written in blood, and every benediction 
emphasized by an anathema. The honest convic- 
tions of the human heart have in every age been 
derided, and men have lifted up their voices and 
shouted in brutal violence OA^er the ashes of human 
constancy. The best men, as the world counted 
goodness in the time of Christ, hated Christ the 
most. The teachers and exponents of God perse- 
cuted God the most bitterly when He was mani- 
fested in the flesh. He came unto His own, and 
His own received Him noj:. 

There is nothing sadder than this retrospect of 
human perversions of divine knowledge and facul- 
ties imparted to man. The verdict of man's own 
acts is against him ; and Calvary remains to-day, 
and ever will remain, the superlative expression 
of the natural cruelty of man on the one hand, 
and the tender love of God on the other. 

It has been granted us to live in a Christian 
age and land. The fagot and the torch are behind 
us. The arena no longer smokes with innocent 
blood, and the dungeon is no longer regarded as an 
agent of salvation. And yet, the judgment of the 
world through other media of expression not un- 
frequently reveals the same harsh and unmerciful 
spirit. The Pharisees still live ; and were there a 
Christ there might yet be a cross, and stoning an 
expression of their creed. 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 3 

I am to speak to-night of the tenderness and 
patience of God toward human weakness and 
human sin. Would that my words might open to 
your understandings clearer and truer views of the 
Divine nature than some of you perchance have 
yet obtained. "Would that I might aid you to con- 
ceive of your Heavenly Father as He is, — full of 
forbearance and tender mercies ; yearning over you 
witli a love you cannot conceive ; drawing nigh to 
your hearts through His providence and the Gos- 
pels, as the sun, through every beam and ray, draws 
nigh to the earth in spring with gentle ministries 
of encouragement to grow^th, and sweet solicitations 
to fragrance and beauty. Then should you indeed 
be taught and comforted ; then would your natures 
be quickened and stirred, and all their deep-rooted 
and wide-branching faculties of thought and feeling 
thrill with new and vernal expressions of life. The 
gratitude of our hearts would rise as incense before 
His throne, and each would say, " The doors of this 
place have been to me to-night like the gates of 
heaven and the portals of peace." 

It is pleasant for me to minister to you this 
evening. It is pleasant for me to think that here 
we can worship and investigate together. Various 
in the experiences of our lives, various in our intel- 
lectual conceptions of God, manifold in our wants, 
strangers by face ; still our thoughts, like waters 
colored and enriched by the several soils through 



4 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

which they come down to a common junction, can 
mingle and join in this hour and place. Hail to 
the hour when differences fade away ; when stran- 
gers meet as friends ; when the long-lost brother- 
hood of soul with soul, the almost forgotten fellow- 
ship in song, the bond of common impulse, is found 
at last in Christ ! 

I would first speak of the tenderness of God as 
shown at certain periods and seasons of our lives. 

There are two ways of looking at man morally : 
one is to regard him as always struggling and al- 
ways winning ; the other, as never struggling and 
never winning at all. Both of these ways are 
wrong. On the one hand, there are times of great 
moral despondency and dejection, — when the soul 
lies limp and inoperant, when the moral faculties 
seem benumbed and drugged into fatal lethargy,. 
when the call of duty awakens no response or 
elicits only rebellion ; but there is never a time of 
stagnation. The soul, like the ocean, is full of 
currents, and they channel and pierce it with agita- 
tions. Life is full of impulses. It is breezy and 
tremulous ; and as the winds of heaven sweep down 
upon the ocean and ruffle and convulse it, so upon 
us influences are poured, at the coming and press- 
ure of which we cannot remain passive. 

I think that in the heart of almost every man and 
woman, underneath the covering of forms, under- 
neath the crust of heartless custom, underneath the 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 5 

habit of selfishness, you will find a generous im- 
pulse, a desire to grow better and to aiH others 
in worthiness. God has not withdrawn His spirit 
from mankind. Above us is a moral firmament, 
and in it that spirit, like a more resplendent sun, 
is suspended. The rays of its light and warmth 
penetrate everywhere. They reach and minister 
to the lowest and coarsest forms of spiritual life. 
There is not a thought so dark, there is not a wish 
so ignoble, there is not an ambition so vain, that 
it is not less dark and ignoble and vain because 
of this influence. The Grod of the rose is the God 
of the bramble as well ; and even the thorn-tree 
must leaf, and sweetness is extorted from the brier. 
This desire, this generous impulse, must find ex- 
pression. The warmth above stirs the deadness 
beneath, and makes barrenness uneasy. And yet, 
in spite of all this, spiritual dejection comes, de- 
spondency and heaviness of heart ensue. We have 
struggled so much, and won so httle ; we have 
fought against circumstances, and by circumstances 
been defeated ; the summit seems so far off, and the 
path so steep, that our courage fails at times, and 
we sink in despair. Between the triumph and our- 
selves are the Garden and the Cross ; and, stand- 
ing alone in the darkness of the night, we wring our 
hands and cry, " If it be possible, let this cup pass 
from me 1 " Sometimes a great temptation circles 
us on all sides ; its circumference of blackness gir- 



6 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

dies lis, and we seek in vain for an outlet to escape. 
We drop upon our knees in prayer, but prayer 
brings no relief. We dash madly at the awful 
belt, but find it to be like a cable of triple steel. 
We rush frantically from side to side ; circum- 
stances conspire in evil conjunction. We are 
dazed, we are hopeless. The madness of despair 
seizes upon us, and sinking down we say, " Why 
struggle longer, — it is in vain ? Fate is against 
me, Heaven is not for me : I can do no more, I 
can only die." 

My friend, don't you die ; and never, never 
cease to contend. When you have reached that 
position, know that you have come very near God. 
Weakness is ever near God. He draws nigh to it 

o 

as a mother draws nigh to a suffering child. What 
man or woman here, if, when walking at night, 
you should hear the cry of a- deserted babe, would 
not 'follow the sound, and, running to the little 
thing, lift it in your arms and carry it to shelter 
and care ? And do you think God is less merciful 
than you ? Do you think that you can teach Him 
sympathy, or show Him how to be tender ? Do 
you think that He ever heard a deserted soul cry- 
ing in the night of its trouble, and does not go to 
it and lift it to His bosom, and carry it to the light 
and shelter of His love ? If a poor bruised reed is 
sacred in His sight ; if the weak and wounded things 
in the natural kingdom — the trodden grass, the 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 7 

broken "bough, the falling birds — are not beneath 
His notice, who is he that dares to say the poor 
bruised soul is not for Him to love, that the pros- 
trate spirit and the breaking heart and the stilled 
hope are beyond the limit of His care and the 
reach of His helping hand ? Why, consider this 
in the light of history and revelation a moment. 

Who are they that whiten heaven with the 
flowing of their garments ? whose hands lift 
those ever-vibrating harps ? whose heads are 
crowned and "^Teathed ? whose brows are illumi- 
nated with that new name given them of God ? 
Are they not those who came out of great tribu- 
lation; whose robes are washed and made white 
in the blood of the Lamb ? Who first followed 
the Saviour along the path of his ascension, and 
demonstrated in the sight of heaven the efficacy 
of the atonement as an act already accomplished ? 
Was it not the thief who hung on the cross ? Unto 
whom was given the keys of the kingdom, the 
badiije of honor and hio'h esteem ? Was it not 
unto him who denied his Lord ? Who was ap- 
pointed to break the boundary of Jewish preju- 
dice ; to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, and make 
it free as the w^ater that runs and the lioiit that 
shines ? Was it not Paul, the persecutor of Jesus ? 
And whose heart here to-night is fullest of grat- 
itude ? whose lips beyond the grave will open 
quickest in thanksgiving ? — whose ? Of that 



8 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

one among us whose darkness was the most 
dense when the light of mercy broke through 
and illumined it ! 

'No, no, my friend, don't you despair; there's 
hope in your future yet. There is not a hand's- 
breadth of sky between you and the grave to-day 
that is not of azure so long as in your heart lin- 
gers one regret for sin, one desire of doing good, 
— one longing for God, one hope of moral mas- 
tery. Put yourself in the right, then endure unto 
the end, and you shall be saved. AVhat a joy it 
is to preach a gospel of hope to you ! 

Again I would remark, that if the bruised reed 
may represent our broken hopes, it may also repre- 
sent our broken resolutions. 

I have said already that our lives morally were 
marked with fluctuations. Our feelings' rise and 
sink like waves of the sea. If at one moment we 
gain the wished-for elevation, the next we are 
shaken from it as a bird is blown from the top- 
most branches of an exposed tree when a gust 
strikes it. And yet how noble is the mind of 
man in its conceptions ! How far it can flash its 
thoughts ! Along what interminable lines, across 
what vast spaces, the intellect can pursue its in- 
vestigations ! How exalted those emotions which 
inspire the soul at times, and lift it as on mighty 
and invisible wings above the earth and earthly 
surroundings ! You have all had these moods,, — 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 9 

these reacliings out and elevation of feeling. You 
have had longings and dissatisfactions with self, and 
travailed in the birth of strong desires, begotten of 
God, to be better and accomplish more good. And 
you have more than once resolved that it should 
be so. In the street, in the office, and in the cham- 
ber, in the closet, in company, or alone with your- 
selves, conscience has smitten you, and you have 
said, "This thing must stop. I will change my 
course to-day, and be no more as I have been." 
And some of you can date a great change from 
such moments, — such a change as comes over a 
rose when it blossoms, or over the heavens when 
the rising wind sweeps it free from clouds. 

I believe every soul has such moments of con- 
viction and resolution, — moments when more by 
far than we can see depends upon how w^e act; 
when our own happiness and the happiness of 
others hang poised on the decision of a moment. 
It takes but an instant and a single revolution of 
the wheel to turn the ship, but by that movement 
it is decided whether she shall anchor on this side 
of the globe or on that. It takes but an instant 
for the mind to act, yet in the passing of a thought 
it is often settled what will be the direction and 
issue of a life. 

JSTow the past is full of such experience ; such 

seasons of introspection and resolution have come 

to us all. Time and again have our souls mounted 
1* 



10 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

from the low level of our lives, like a lark tremu- 
lous with song; but no sooner had w^e poured 
forth the raptures of the passing impulse, than 
we dropped again into the marsh, and were ashamed 
at our own fickleness. 

Now, friends, God, as I conceive, is never nearer 
to one than when he stands dissatisfied with him- 
self and manner of life, and longs to be better. 
"When the mind is about to make a needed resolu- 
tion, God invariably draws nigh to help it. Be- 
cause you have broken one resolution, never im- 
agine that He will not assist you to keep another, 
made with greater wisdom and a more determined 
purpose. The temples of God, so far as we repre- 
sent them, are all constructed out of ruins. He 
builds from the fragments of an ancient overthrow. 
Be persuaded of this, that nothing good in you 
ever escapes the notice of God. He is not, as some 
seem to picture him, a heartless overseer, standing • 
over you whip in hand, and watching for a chance 
to get in a blow. His observation is like a gar- 
dener's. There is not a bud of promise that can 
open in your soul, there is not an odor that can be 
added to the fragrance of your lives, that he does, 
not detect it and rejoice in it. Whatever beautifies 
you glorifies Him. He delights in your develop- 
ment, and smiles on your every effort in that di- 
rection. Go'd is always ready to give a man one 
more chance. The world is hard and smiting in 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 11 

its judgments, and swift as lightning in its cen- 
sure ; and its condemnation falls on a man as a 
huge beam of timber falls on tlie body, crushing it 
down to the ground and holding it there ; but 
God is slow to ^Tath, full of forbearance and ten- 
der mercies. He prunes away the dead and soggy 
branches, He transplants and grafts ; but He never 
cuts a tree of productive nature down, yea, after 
three years of barrenness the tree has yet one 
more year of grace, and the last year is fuller of 
care and nurture and enticements to fruitfulness, 
than all the others. 

jS'ow, I suppose that if the good resolutions we 
have formed and broken were represented mate- 
rially to the eye, we should all appear to those that 
gazed upon us as standing amid fragments of for- 
mer beauty and the cast-up foundations of former 
strength ; and I suppose that morally we do so ap- 
pear in the sight of God to-night. And the specta- 
cle of our dejection and overthrow, of our failure 
and prostration, of our ruin and despair, stirs him 
with pity, and awakens all his mercy and compassion 
in our behalf. And if there is one here who is 
worse off morally than the rest of us, — one who 
stands more bewildered and hopeless amid the 
debris of the commandments he has broken, — one 
who is more scarred and bruised than the majority 
of us, — God by an election of mercy draws nighest 
to that soul, and through the prayers and hymns 



12 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and words of this service, the raemories and uses 
of this day, He seeks to encourage that man to 
renewed spiritual effort and inspire him with hope 
to try again. Why with hope ? Because no man 
ever attempts anything without hope. There is not 
the least element of heavenly progress in despair, 
and the first thing the Spirit of God seeks to stir 
in the soul is a great expectation of a coming good. 
That Divine influence comes out of the heavens 
upon a soul as a strong current of air, after a day 
of fog and storm, comes out of the west, clears up 
the clouded horizon of his Kfe, sweeps the long- 
gathered and thickening darkness from over his 
head, and brightens the firmament with stars. 
Would that one and another of you here might 
feel this Divine Spirit coming to you in this man- 
ner to-night, feel the atmosphere of your sluggish 
or stormy lives vibrate to the incoming of such 
change-working influences, and that ahead of you 
were years of sunlit effort, and at the close an hour 
of radiant decline ! In this spirit of hope or proph- 
ecy — I know not which — I point you all to lives 
nobler than you have thus far lived, to a moral 
elevation of feeling higher than you have thus far 
experienced, to sympathies for man wider, deeper, 
more generous than any you have thus far felt, — 
to a consecration of all your powers to God's ser- 
vice, and to an hour at last of spiritual victory and 
supreme reward. 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 13 

And I want you all to feel, — because it is true, — 
that all tliis is made possible througb the tender 
love of God for you, as revealed by analogy in 
nature, and more fully yet, as through a more per- 
fect medium, in the life and death of his only- 
begotten Son, Christ Jesus our Lord. 

This passage, this quotation from the Old Tes- 
tament in order to illustrate the spirit of the New, 
suggests to my mind another thought, which grows, 
as I live, more and more delightful to me. It is- 
this : that Christ does not and will not apply the 
least force or violence to propagate his law or 
religion. 

Now, if there is one thing that my mind revolts 
at more than another, it is at any rude and violent 
interference with its independence, with the law 
and order of its free action. If religion meant sur- 
render of intellectual freedom, if it meant subju- 
gation of any faculty to superior power, if it meant 
bondage of thought and terror of motive, there is 
not a principle in my nature which would not rise 
up in arms against it. Heaven must not be made 
to appear to my mind as a vast corral, into which 
souls like cattle are stampeded by force or fear. 
And I know not of any style of speech more ob- 
noxious to me than that which presents nothing 
higher, nothing nobler to men, to inspire them with 
religious tendencies than the motive of fear. The 
horror of hell can furnish no well-regulated mind 



14 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS.. 

with an impulse toward heaven. And a preacher 
who appeals to fear, to sheer cowardice, in his au- 
dience, is unfit to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. 
Such a speaker perverts and belittles the Gospels. 
He insults intelligence. He can find no warrant 
for his monstrous misinterpretation of God, and 
outrage on intellectual laws, in the teachings and 
conduct of Christ or the Apostles. Why, you might 
as well try to frighten a flower into lifting its face 
toward the sun as to frighten a soul into lifting 
itself toward God ! The attraction of light and love 
from above, and not the propulsion of fear from 
beneath, is what accomplishes the beautiful result. 
There is no need of any such rude and tyrannous 
force, such violent benevolence. In the soul are 
certain capacities and afiinities, and God is to them 
their natural object of love and service. To clear 
away the obstructions which Satan has pushed up 
between the soul and God, to enlighten the under- 
standing and thereby correct the judgment, to in- 
terpret God properly to the mind and heart of the 
hearer, is the preacher's duty and the preacher's 
joy. To send each hearer away at the close of a 
service, feeling that he is thankful that the heavens 
are what they are, and God is what he is, and he 
himself is as he is, save as to his sin, is the highest 
triumph of preaching. Why, you cannot frighten 
man even in the inclination of his appetites. You 
cannot break down and disrupt by force even the 



Tqp TENDERNESS OF GOD. 15 

bulwark of liis sensations. If any particular species 
of fruit — a pear, for instance — is distasteful to a 
person, you cannot annul by force or fear the law of 
his sensations ; you can, indeed, compel him to eat 
it, but it is repugnant nevertheless, and yields no sat- 
isfaction to his taste ; and if man, along the lower 
ranges of his nature, thus defies your insane attempt 
at compulsion, do you imagine that you can con- 
quer him by the same method along the higher ? If 
you cannot subjugate his body, the weak and per- 
ishable part of him, do you conceive that you can 
subdue his mind and soul, and the mighty and im- 
mortal faculties of his beino- ? 

N'ow God, inasmuch as he is our Creator, under- 
stands the structure and law of our minds, and 
never offers the least violence to their free exer- 
cise. Indeed, our independence is his glory ; and 
the unforced, spontaneous character of our obedi- 
ence and praise is what gives them the chief value 
in his sight. No, my friend, God will use no com- 
pulsion with you. He loads neither scale of the 
balance. You sit your throne of self-sovereignty 
in undisturbed possession. You are free in the 
exercise of, your volition, — free as God himself. 
Your salvation or damnation will be the result of 
your own voluntary act. To-night your feet are 
at the fork of two roads : the one is narrow and 
straight, and few there be that tread it, but those 
who walk it are walking forever upward ; the other 



16 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. , 

is wide and crooked, and multitudes throng it, but 
those who wheel and rush along that populous 
road are going downward. Some of you, I say, 
stand at the fork of these divergent roads this 
evening ; and you are free, perfectly free, to enter 
either. Pause and reflect before you take your 
next step, for that may decide the entire journey. 
I wonder which path you are deciding to enter ! 

Have you ever thought how many weak things 
there are in the world ? Look at the natural king- 
dom. How few are the oaks and how many are the 
rushes ! There is a rose, with a stem so fragile as 
to almost break under the burden of its own blush- 
ing and fragrant bloom. Yet God is God of the 
reed and the rose. There is not a spire of grass 
bruised by the trampling foot ; there is not a leaf 
fluttering from a twig ; there is not a bird that flies 
nor a worm that crawls, — no, nor any order of cre- 
ated life, — so low and weak as to be beneath His 
care. N'ow look at man. Look at society in its 
component parts. Consider men and women as 
they live and move to-day. Are they strong or 
weak ? are they happy or sad ? are they joyful or 
do they need comfort ? Why, friends, I sometimes 
think that there is no such thing as happiness in 
the world. So much disappointment, so much mis- 
ery, so much concealed pain, so many hidden sor- 
rows, so much studiously covered wretchedness, 
comes to my knowledge that I almost lose hope 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 17 

and heart at times, and feel like crying out : " So- 
ciety is a vast cliarnel-liouse, where everything 
that is bright in hope or cheerful in expectation 
lies buried. Life is a monstrous disappointment, 
and death the only portal to peace." There is not 
a day that passes in which virtue does not sell 
itself for bread ; in which some poor, harassed, or 
frenzied creature does not rush madly upon death ; 
in which the good are not persecuted and the weak 
trampled upon. Behind windows you look at 
heedlessly, tragedies red as history or fiction ever 
painted are being acted, and faces you admire mask 
with smiles an inward torture worse than the agony 
of the rack. Who, even in this audience, has real- 
ized the fulfilment of his early hope ? Whose life 
has not its mortifications, its bitter concealments, 
its studied evasions, its poignant humiliations, its 
wild uneasiness, its wrestlings and defeat ? But we 
do not represent life ; we represent only the fairest 
portions and the highest level of it. Below us are 
the great masses of humanity, and they writhe and 
moan and weep, they toil and starve and curse 
and fight aijd die. The world goes roaring on as 
heedless of those who fall as the gale in autumn is 
heedless of the leaves it strips from the tree, or the 
branches it \vrenches away. But God is mindful 
of it all ; he notes it all, and I would fain think 
that, in the infinite resources of healing, is balm 
for all, " Come unto me, all ye who labor and are 



18 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS, 

heavy laden, and I will give you rest." What a 
promise that is ! He will not sell it to us, nor 
loan it to us : he gives it to us. And what a reach 
and stretch there is in the assurance, " Come 
unto me all ye " ! It includes every one. N'ot the 
rich, not the refined, not the pure, but the poor 
and the coarse, the fallen and the weak ; those 
who have been wrecked by others, and those w^ho 
have wrecked themselves, — all can have rest. Eest ! 
Who gets rest in this life, outside of God ? Whose 
mind gets rest ? Whose soul gets it ? Does the 
ocean get rest ? Does the wind get it ? Does 
the torrent find repose ? Yes. For the ocean has 
its calms, and the wind lulls, and the torrent in 
summer ceases to roar; but the life of man is 
rougher than the sea, and fiercer than the wind, 
and more headlong than the torrent, and in him- 
self man finds no rest, and no repose, and no 
season for repose, until the vault darkens over his 
head and that long night with its dreamless sleep 
comes on. And God sees all this and feels it all, 
and the beat of his sympathy is without intermis- 
sion. 

Now there are a great many things that tend to 
keep us from God, but nothing, no, nor all other 
hindrances put together, so much as wrong views 
of God. There is a girl whose virtue lies like a 
soiled and trampled flower, unable to lift itself. 
She cannot go to God, because her purity is gone. 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 19 

''God is white," she says, " and how can I go to white- 
ness ? " There is a man of business, who will not be 
a Christian because he has no time. As if it took 
time to inhale the perfume of a bank of violets, 
when the wind blows it into your very face. Here 
is another down upon whose faith and hope and life 
a great blast of tribulation has sw^ooped, and torn 
everything up by the roots, and prostrated all the 
growth of twenty years of religious education ; and, 
standing over the grave or in the empty house, she 
wrings her hands, and cries out : " There is no God 
in the heavens, or if there is, he is hard and 
harsh and cruel, for he has taken from me my 
husband and all my children at one rude blow ! " 
I met a man the other day who had lived like the 
prodigal ; wasted the substance of body and brain 
in riotous living. A magnificent wreck he was. 
A man w^ho stood as I have seen a tree stand after 
a fire had swept through the forest, — blasted and 
charred to the very core, all the life and vigor 
burnt out of it ; yet keeping its magnificent girth 
and symmetry of proportion, even to the top- 
most bough. So that man stood. I took him 
kindly by the hand, and said, "Friend, there is 
hope in your future yet." He drew himself slowly 
up until he stood at his straightest, looked me 
steadily in the eye, and said, " Do you mean to 
say, Mr. Murray, that if I w^ent to-night to God, 
He would pardon such a wretch as I ? " 



20 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

See how he misunderstood God I See how we 
all misunderstand Him ! Pardon ! Is there any 
one He will not pardon ? Is there a noisome marsh 
or stagnant pool on the face of the whole earth so 
dark, so reeking with rottenness and mire, that the 
sun scorns to shine on it ? and is there a man so 
low, so heavy with corruption, so coarse and bru- 
tal that God's love does not seek him out ? How 
is the world to be redeemed if you put a limit to 
God's love ? How is the great mass of humanity 
to be washed and lifted if the thoughts of God are 
like our thoughts, and His ways like our ways ? It 
is because He does not love as we do, because He 
does not feel as we do, because He does not act as 
we do, that I have any hope for my race, — that I 
have any hope for myself. 

A bruised reed He will not break. Let our 
thoughts, like a song, close with the sweetness of 
the opening note. As those who, leaving home in 
winter when all is bleak and drear, come back in 
spring to find the trees in blossom, and the earth 
exhaling odors, and everything more lovely than 
w^hen they left ; so I w^ould call your minds back 
to the assurance of the Scriptures, the tenderness 
of God, and the opening thought of our discourse. 
This evening we have been permitted to meet in 
this place for worship. Let it stand in your re- 
membrance as the expression of His love. This is 
the sabbath hour ; let it be remembered as the hour 



THE TENDERNESS OF GOD. 21 

in which so many of us worshipped and adored 
together. Are we strangers ? No, we are friends, 
and the day and audience warrant the word. The 
bitterness, the jealousies, the rivalries, the piques, 
the misconceptions to which life has exposed us, 
die out in our hearts as we sit here together; a 
tenderness not unlike the tenderness of God steals 
into our bosoms. The throb of mutual sympathy, 
the lifting of common prayer, the aspiration for a 
higher life, bind us together. Who wishes ill to 
any ? None. Who remembereth ill done or ill 
received, save to forgive or ask to be forgiven ? 
Not one. We yield our hands to the clasp of a 
universal brotherhood, and our thoughts fly out in 
love toward the poor and the ignorant, the weak, 
the sinful, and the lowly, the world over. God 
pity them all ; and most of all we pray that He 
may use us to make His tenderness and mercy 
known to them. 

And thus I commend you all to the tenderness 
of God. May the thought of it comfort you when 
you need comfort, and strengthen you when you 
need strength ! And when you shall meet at last 
face to face what men most dread, but which I do 
not doubt shall prove to many of you here your 
best friend, may the same tenderness be over you 
as the face of a mother is over her waking child. 
This earth is not our home. God is beckoning 
us onward. ' We shall depart. We shall pass into 



22 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

forgetfulness. We shall sleep. We shall be changed. 
Into what we know not ; but this we know, that 
we shall be satisfied when we awake in his like- 
ness. What will that waking, what wiU that 
likeness, be ? 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 23 



SERMOX II. 
THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 

" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will 
toward men." — Luke ii. 14. 

AS a matter of history this verse is exceedingly 
interesting. It shows us how the birth of 
our Redeemer was celebrated. Heaven recognized 
the magnitude of the event, and through its repre- 
sentatives congratulated the earth. Toward God 
the attitude of heaven was that of praise, — praise 
of His love and wisdom and power. Toward the 
earth it was one of sympathy and felicitation. The 
angels appreciated the value of that birth to man, 
and predicted the era of universal peace and good- 
will. In this the angels only expressed what the 
Scriptures everywhere confirm ; what Christ loved 
to say of Himself, what the prophets said of Him 
from the beginning ; what the Apostles wrote, and 
John foresaw. If ever peace was made visible in 
outward form, it w^as in the person of our blessed 
Lord ; if ever good-will to man found expression, 
it did in the life and teachings of Christ; and 
whether you look at the influence of His deeds or 
His nature, we can in very truth assert that " of His 
peace there is no end." 



24 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

Previous to Christ there was no peace, either in 
principle or expression, among men. War was the 
normal condition and practice of mankind. The 
strong ruled the weak. The world was divided into 
two classes, — oppressors and slaves. Wrong had 
become systematized. Civil government, which 
should be a fountain of peace, was a source of 
war ; and nations were as wild animals that have 
no law but their appetites and their fears. 

Men in their individual relations were antago- 
nistic and rude. Humane impulse had not been 
born. Brotherly love," as of one stock and race, 
was unknown. The Jew hated the Gentile, and 
the Gentile retaliated on the Jew. Even religion 
begat animosities, and men inspired by it became 
cruel and perverse. 

Now, Christ came to change all this, and the 
angelic heralds truly proclaimed his mission. He 
came to introduce a new and higher order of life 
and feeling, — to awaken the dormant power of 
sympathy in man, — to bridge the chasm of hatred 
which divided nations and races, and bring them 
at last to the acknowledgment and practice of 
universal brotherhood. 

I propose to discuss before you to-night the 
subject of Peace and Good- Will among men, and 
the result to which they would lead. I must omit 
the national relations of it, although they are 
worthy of attention. God works up through the 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 25 

individual to the nation, and tliroii^li one nation 
to all nations. This is the law, the drift and ten- 
dency of His administration, and I have no doubt 
but that eventually all differences between na- 
tions will be settled by friendly arbitration, and 
not as now by the sword. But I must pass this 
point by this evening. I wish to notice, in the 
first place, the personal and church relations of 
the subject, and remark upon the cheering pro- 
gress whicli is being made toward union of all 
moral forces in society, and the harmonizmg of all 
differences which provoke discord and enmity. 
Secondly, I shall allude to the relation of this prin- 
ciple to us as individual Christians, and show how 
and when we shall find peace. 

Now, any one who observes the present state of 
things about us must see that the good are not 
united as the bad are. Evil has a coherence, 
a unity, a oneness of purpose and combination 
of energies, to which goodness has not as yet at- 
tained. The wicked all pull one way, and they 
pull witli all their might. Wickedness is always 
unanimous, and self-collected, and at peace with 
itself. The Devil never rejects any help, come from 
what source it may. He welcomes direct, and he 
welcomes indirect assistance also. Whatever can 
debauch men, whatever can lead them astray, 
whoever will assist him by little or by much, is 
accepted and enrolled among his forces. By 



26 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

this process, by tliiis utilizing every agent and 
agency, he is enabled to accomplish vast results, 
and keep his seat and throne in the world. It is 
not so with the good. They have not as yet 
learned the lesson of combination, the power 
which lies in organization and unity of effort. If 
a man or organization is half wrong, Satan utilizes 
that half, and works it in somehow to advance his 
schemes of mischief ; but if a man or organization 
is only half good, good men stand off and look 
askant at it and say : " Il^o, we cannot affiliate with 
that; we must not have anything to do with it 
lest we are misunderstood, lest we hazard our in- 
fluence." And so the sum total of correct influ- 
ence in society is lessened. 

The good are thus divided and separated one 
from another; differences are perpetuated, and 
union and peace deferred. You may take this city 
for an illustration, — and it supplies us with a good 
one too. Here lines are drawn ; and one class of 
power stands on this side, and another on that. 
One man says, "This view of God is the true 
view," and will haA^e nothing to do with another 
who disputes it. And so it comes about that we 
are fighting evil here in companies and squads, 
and under a dozen leaders, and not by regiments 
and brigades and divisions, all under one leader, 
assisted by co-operation of all his forces. Not 
only so, but some good people seem afraid lest old 



THE UxNION OF MORAL FORCES. 27 

differences should not continue, and the old sui- 
cidal and wicked division of moral forces endure. 
They seem to think that to be faithful to truth 
they must keep knocking somebody down, or be 
continually knocked down themselves, and that, 
if opposition to them should cease, and former op- 
ponents begin to coalesce with them, the truth 
for which they have so long struggled would in 
some way be endangered, and their relation to it 
changed. 

Why, I am astonished at the way some men 
talk and act. There is a certain class of orthodox 
Christians in this city, who seem to be afraid to 
have any one outside of their own sect agree with 
them. They have made orthodoxy consist so 
much in theological opposition that they are 
frightened to see those who have held different 
views beg^in to harmonize with them. If a man 
preaches the Gospel with such demonstration of 
love and spiritual power that it reaches the heart, 
and a person supposed to be a Unitarian says, 
" That 's good preaching enough for me," they be- 
gin at once to be suspicious of the preaching and 
the preacher. Just as if bitterness and difference 
and wrangling were to continue forever in this 
city ! just as if God had nothing in store for us 
here but perpetual alienation, division, and hos- 
tility ! I do not believe any such monstrous pre- 
diction as that. The world moves ; and it moves, 



28 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

as impelled by God's spirit, toward harmony and 
peace, and a union of moral forces, here and the 
world over, nnder one banner, in order to accom- 
plish certain blessed and needed results. For one, 
I hail, as an auspicious omen, these symptoms of 
returning good sense and correct views and loving 
fellowship together under Christ. I would go far- 
ther to find one point of agreement with a good 
man than to discover five of difference. My 
brother, in love to man and faith toward God, — 
brother still, although differing in views, — tell me 
what you hold in common with me ; tell me where 
and how we can join hands to teach the ignorant, 
and clothe the naked, and feed the starving, and 
reform the vicious ; and leave whatever difference 
there may be between us for God to settle and ex- 
plain when we have entered His presence. There 
is such a thing as a man standing so straight as to 
fall over backward, and it is possible for a Chris- 
tian to make so much of his denomination or his 
creed as to forget the Gospels. The Puritans were 
orthodox enough, but they were not precisely such 
models as we should follow in their treatment 
of dissentients. They drew their inspiration from 
the Jewish rather than the Christian dispensation. 
The Old Testament and not the ]N"ew, misapplied 
and perverted, was the baleful torch with Avhich 
they lighted their witch-fires. 

Now it seems to me perfectly natural that men 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 29 

who have opposed evangelical religion should 
gradually drop their opposition and begin to har- 
monize with it. A vast deal of opposition to or- 
thodox opinion in this city springs from a gross 
ignorance of what it teaches and its holders believe. 
Men have been educated to believe a slander and 
a lie. They have been educated to believe that we 
of evangelical views preach "that hell is paved with 
infants' skulls," — that " men by nature are as bad 
as devils, as bad as they can be," — and other enor- 
mous and outrageous propositions, which no ortho- 
dox preacher preaches or believes. And when, one 
by one, they are undeceived ; when they hear us 
preach of the love and tenderness of God for hu- 
man kind ; when they hear us preach a gospel of 
hope, of love for others, of cheerfulness and pro- 
gression, they are surprised and say, " Well now, 
if that is orthodox preaching, then I am orthodox." 
There is another thought in this connection, and 
I am glad to call your attention to it, for it requires 
frankness on my part to suggest, and candor on your 
part to consider it. The great joy of my public life 
is that I am in a city where free speech in America 
was born, where it has been nurtured, and where it 
still thrives. Your intelligence is such that you not 
only do not fear, but you desire the freest utterance 
on the part of your speakers, the fullest discussion 
of passing events ; your city has been the theatre 
of a great religious revolution ; some of you can 



30 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

remember perhaps the earthquake which shook the 
doctrinal structure of many churches to the ground. 
You heard the crash and the shouting which fol- 
lowed. And now another great movement is begin- 
ning to make itself felt. Men who have been trying 
to build a house without mortar and without brick 
are beginning to search for the old foundations, if 
perad venture they may find, in modified form, some 
basis for their faith to stand on. I doubt whether 
men were ever more dissatisfied with the old faith 
than they are with the new, ever more adrift and 
uneasy within themselves as to what to believe. 
Seventy years of experiment have demonstrated 
that negation is not religion, that sisepticism is no 
adequate equivalent for faith, and that men who 
can do nothing but tear away and pull down and 
destroy are no fit guides to those who believe in 
right and wrong and the immortality of the soul. 
And we who attempt to discuss these matters, 
whom you haA^e chosen as your watchmen, are 
bound to tell you how the heavens look and which 
way the wind blows. 

Well, the thought which I would suggest is this : 
It is the law that all revolts from established order 
of thought should go first to extremes, and then to 
gradually correct themselves. Men do not at once 
see the logical results of revolution. They do not 
see that anarchy is removed but a single step from 
independence. When this city broke away from the 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 31 

position of the fathers, many of the prime movers 
in that theological stampede never dreamed to what 
madness their followers would go. Channing never 
dreamed of a Frothingliam. I speak from the 
evangelical stand-point, of course, and I say, that 
there are thousands of Unitarians, so called, in this 
city to-day, — men and women of holy lives, who 
love the Bible as much as we do, — who are appalled 
at the radical wing of their denomination. They see 
as plainly as we — no one with eyes can help seeing 
it — that the drift and tendency of their teaching 
is toward infidelity and the baldest scepticism. 
They are alarmed, and, like merchantmen that have 
discovered a pirate in the fleet, begin to draw off. 
They are not prepared to throw overboard the 
Scriptures, to call Christ nothing more than John 
Jones, to dig a pit and cast their long-cherished 
hopes of heaven into it ; and their natural inclina- 
tion, the logical tendency of their position, is to 
get back to safer ground. I verily believe that a 
practical, if not a nominal, union will erelong be 
made between this class of Unitarians and the 
great body of evangelical believers. The date of 
that happy event may be retarded by unforeseen 
circumstances, by pride and perversity on either 
side ; but it is bound to come. Over our go-aves 
our children will join their hands and the Com- 
monwealth, to found which the fathers labored 
and died, will stand, the disastrous schism healed, 



32 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

clothed once more in the unity of her ancestral 
and triumphant faith. 

Come, then, Peace, and breathe upon us 1 Come, 
as the wind comes from the south, warm as the 
touch and fra^ant as the breath of love ! Come, 
as the dove came to the ark, bearing wdth thee the 
symbol and evidence that the waters of death are 
ebbing, and a new world of promise is rising into 
sight ! Come, as the angels came at the birth of 
Christ, and tell us once more of peace and good- 
will to men ! 

There are other reasons than those I have men- 
tioned for this hope, among which is this, — that 
similarity of labors begets similarity of feeling, and 
results in a practical union. Men are looking and 
planning for the union of all denominations, on 
the ground of doctrinal unanimity. They think 
that this denomination will give up one point, 
and another some other ; that each in the inter- 
est of union will pare off some denominational 
corner, and shade down to a common hue some 
exceptional color, until at last everybody will 
think alike. My friends, that day will never 
come ; at least, it is too remote for us of this 
generation to debate. It is a dream, to the ful- 
filment of which the structure of the human mind 
itself is opposed. Men will never think on any one 
topic precisely alike. They cannot look at truth 
from exactly the same point of view, any more 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 33 

than a hundred persons can look at an oil paint- 
ing from precisely the same angle of vision. The 
light and shade will not appear the same to each. 
Education, temperament, predilections, amounting 
often almost to a prejudice, — these will come in 
and cause divergence of opinion. So long as the 
Bible is a necessity, so long will different inter- 
pretations be patronized. While we see God 
through a glass darkly, our views of Him will 
vary, because dimness and the moving of many 
shadows are between us and Him. Not until we 
have risen above the heavy atmospheres of this 
mortal life, — not until, through the crystalline 
medium of heaven, we behold Him face to face, 
and from that altitude, with holy and instructed 
vision, see all the outgoings of His nature, all the 
sequence of His doings, from beginning to end, 
shall we see Him as with one eye. In the light 
of that demonstration differences will fade away, 
and the multitude of the redeemed will stand, 
hand clasped in hand, around a common throne. 
But until that day, my friends, I look for no in- 
tellectual unity. While theology is a science, 
and knowledge of God depends on human, and 
hence fallible and conflicting, interpretations, men 
will continue to dijffer in religious matters. Doc- 
trinally they will stand apart from and opposed 
to each other. WTien we see. God face to face, 
we shall all see Him alike, and not until then. 

2* C 



34 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

"No. The path of -anion and peace in the re- 
ligious world lies not in that direction. Indi- 
vidual opinions will obtrude their obstructions in 
front of us in the future as in the past. They 
cannot be levelled and graded down. You cannot 
make a composite of men's conflicting views, and 
macadamize the future so that the world will roll 
onward and upward without a jolt or jar. The 
true and only practical ground of union is found 
in union of effort, and not union of view& ; in 
oneness of feeling, and not oneness of opinions ; 
in similarity of conduct, and not similarity of 
belief. The Methodist, so far as his head goes, 
will be a Methodist still, the Baptist a Baptist, 
and the Unitarian a Unitarian; but in heart, in 
purpose, in hope of heaven, in labors for man, in 
the emotional and benevolent energies of our na- 
tures, we find our union. Eecruited from many 
States, — of complex opinions, — differing in our 
views as to the causes of the rebellion, and how 
the campaign should be fought out, — agreeing 
only in this, that we are willing to unite and act 
together as against a common enemy, we put 
ourselves under one Leader, blind to all else save 
this, that the banner over us is love. This is a 
union to be desired; this is such a union as it 
is our duty to have ; and this, thank God, is 
nearly ours. 

Men say that I am hopeful, and so I am ;• but 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 35- 

my hope is not a vain dream, a poetical aspira- 
tion. It is a hope' born of knowledge ; it is based 
upon tlie appreliension of a law, — -. a law which I 
trace through all the pages of history as a man 
traces a golden thread through a piece of cloth 
which is being unrolled before his eyes. The law 
is this : That the world has moved onward and 
upward by an accelerated motion and ever-multi- 
plying accumulation of forces. The driving power 
has increased as tlie train has gone thundering on; 
and never did good influences move so fast, never 
did they control and shape so many, as they do 
to-day. The progress made toward union and 
peace in religious matters, in the last two cen- 
turies, is a matter of astonishment. A few facts 
will illustrate this to your satisfaction, and show 
you with what long and rapid strides we have 
advanced. 

Two hundred years ago tjTanny ruled here, and 
the worst kind of tyranny at that ; for it was tyr- 
anny, not over men's bodies, but over their minds. 
About all the religious freedom the Puritans knew 
was, " Think as we do, or suffer the consequences." 

Two hundred years ago tw^o men were tied to the 
tail of a cart, and wdiipped through your streets with 
knotted lashes, — "with all the power the hang- 
man could put forth," as the record says, — their 
mouths being stopped wdth wooden gags to prevent 
their cries of agony from being heard. And what, 



36 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

pray, was their offence ? Simply and solely be- 
cause they were Quakers ! A woman, — and a re- 
cent mother at that, — with her babe in her arms, 
was tied to the whipping-post which stood on the 
Common, near the corner of West Street, and 
beaten nearly to death. And why ? Because she 
was a Quakeress. And when released from that 
brutal violence, she dropped upon her knees, poor 
woman, and prayed that God would forgive her 
persecutors, and bring, at last, a day of liberty and 
peace to this city. 

That day is come. It is here, and we are living 
in it ; and the soul of that saintly Quakeress looks 
down from heaven, and sees the fulfilment of her 
prayers this evening, and rejoices at the sight ! 

Two hundred years ago, within a stone's-throw of 
Tremont Temj)le, where Brother Fulton is preach- 
ing, a man was cruelly and publicly whipped for 
being a Baptist. 

Why do I mention these things ? Simply that 
you may realize the progress which the world has 
made in the last two centuries toward union and 
peace ; that you may see that, when one ex- 
presses the belief that not many years hence all 
who obey God and love their fellow-men shall 
stand tos^ether, he does not deal in extrava^^ant 
speech, but makes a prediction which all liistory 
warrants and renders probable. I tell you, friends, 
the old warfares, one by one, are dying out. The 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 37 

sounds of bitter contention are being hushed. 
Death is gradually bringing a conclusion to past 
bitterness, and traces of conflict are being covered 
by the grass which grows on graves. AVe are all 
moving, as a ship, after a period of storm, goes 
moving into the west. The clouds are broken 
and rolled upward. The sea and sky are crimson, 
every sail is a sheet of orange, every rope a line of 
gold. And so it moves along its path of emerald, 
crested with fire, gathering a deeper glory as it 
moves, until the winds die out, the waters sleep, 
and night, brilliant with stars, settles over the 
tranquil sea. 

Not only does the course of history corroborate 
this view, but the very nature of the case makes 
it probable. Why, what is the great aim of the 
Gospel ? What is its drift and tendency ? To 
separate and antagonize the good ? to divorce 
and divide and set one in array against another ? 
No ; the tendency of Christianity is to bring the 
good together. Christ is as a great magnet, and 
those who feel the attraction of His name and spirit 
converge and are drawn nearer together them- 
selves, being drawn nearer to Him. When we sing 
"Nearer, my God, to Thee," Ave petition not only 
nearness to Him, but also nearness to all His crea- 
tures. The good of all ages and climes belong, in 
a peculiar sense, to each other. Not one of all 
that vast multitude who died at the stake ; not 



38 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

one of the thousands who laid down their lives 
for liberty ; not one of that long list who died be- 
fore the dawn of the day in which we now rejoice, 
sighing for light ; not a man or woman is striving 
or dying for man's good to-day, but that is knit 
and united to me. I appropriate the spirit as 
truly as the results of their lives. For what is 
history, — for what civilization, — for what the 
arts and appliances of letters, — for what the ele- 
ment of sympathy in man, — if not to unite us to 
the great and the good of all time ? I anticipate 
the fellowship of the pure that shall be mine in 
heaven, as the gardener anticipates the rich per- 
fume of the blossom by the first suggestion of 
fragrance in the bud. We enroll ourselves in the 
great fraternity of God's children on earth before 
we enter the fellowship of His children in heaven. 
My friends, as the power of the Spirit is more 
and more felt in our hearts, so will this Divine 
unity of love between all the good be more real- 
ized in our souls. It is not for me to say who 
will feel it, it is not for me to say who is worthy ; 
but all who are worthy will feel it. Names will 
continue to exist, nominal distinctions will sur- 
vive; but, deeper than all, dearer than all, the 
unity of the Spirit will be felt. We shall still 
abide each in his own house, but the intercourse 
of love and community of feeling will exist un- 
trammelled and unchecked. From the ashes of 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 39 

former differences peace shall spring, more perfect 
in plumage, sweeter in song, tlian the Phoenix of 
the classics, and man shall be to his fellow-man a 
brother. 

'Now, having spoken of the union and peace 
which are to be experienced among masses of 
men, — of that " bond of perfectness " w^hich is to 
unite and adorn the pure and good, supplanting 
present alienation and difference, I would allude 
to the second point, and direct the application of 
my theme and text to individuals. 

I remark, then, that Christianity produces a 
union of the powers and energies of the individual 
soul. 

The soul, — by which I mean all the operant 
faculties of man's nature, — is now divided, and 
half is hostile to half 

Take any man or woman in this audience ; — let 
any one of you analyze your emotions, recall your 
past ; and you will find that, since the birth of con- 
science in you, you have been at war with your- 
self, your soul has been the arena of conflict. 
Duty and inclination have been at war. Your 
very emotions have joined in the unnatural con- 
test, and often risen in rebellion against what you 
knew was right. The good in you has held its 
own, as a man holds his own in battle, fighting 
against odds, at the point of the bayonet. My 
hearers, I do not say that there are none wlio 



40 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

float through life, — men and women who do not" 
struggle, have few temptations, make few falls : 
some may be protected by circumstance ; some, by 
their very weakness and lack of fibre, may have 
stood unhurt, as grasses stand, when the gale over- 
head is w^ringing and WTenching the branches 
from the oaks, and riving them to the very heart. 
But natures that have any girth to them, any up- 
w^ard reach, any latitude of emotion, any tree-like 
formation, are exposed to pressure, — are often 
made the sport of converging currents and riotous 
forces. Such natures are constantly agitated and 
blown about, and full of writhing and groaning. 
In this category most of the race, and I presume 
most of you to whom I am spealdng, belong. You 
have not floated through life as a feather floats 
upon the evening air ; nor w^ill you sink, as that 
feather falls, unknown and unnoted, into forget- 
fulness. In different spheres of labor and life you 
have toiled and suffered; you have made your 
wealth or daily support, not by luck, but by years 
of application ; you have done some good, and 
Avrought some evil, and the war between the 
higher and lower parts of your nature still wages. 
Even this blessed Sabbath is not so much a day 
of rest as a breathing-spell; for to-morroAV, and all 
the days ahead, will be full of panting and strug- 
gle, until breath fails and the conflict is over 
forever. 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 41 

Now I want to speak to you who have been tossed 
and buffeted amid the conflicting experiences of 
life ; and I want you to feel that every word comes 
directly from my lieart to your hearts, that my 
soul speaks to your souls ; and I say to you, my 
brother and sister, that all you have felt and suf- 
fered, and borne up against, and been prostrated 
by, was a part of God's merciful dealings with 
you. He has blown and buffeted you, he has 
A^T?ung and wrenched you, that he might teach 
you the lesson of your weakness and dependence. 
You have been honored by chastisement ; you 
have been strengthened by opposition ; you have 
been glorified through suffering. When you draw 
nigh to heaven, you will draw nigh to it, it is true, 
as ships creep into harbors after a night of storm, — 
their masts broken, their sails in tatters, and their 
decks all littered with wreck ; but you will enter 
it with hymns of praise and thanksgiving for 
your deliverance. ISTor will you lack welcome. 
Heaven is full of sympathy for such as barely 
escape wreck ; and the shining shore will shine 
all the brighter because of the glorified faces that 
shall throng it as your souls are floated up toward 
the golden marge. 

And you must also feel that, even in this life, 
victory, in part, will be yours. As the days pass, 
you will find that, as a reward for virtuous effort, 
self-mastery is slowly but surely coming to you. 



42 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

Every tempest will cause you to root yourself 
deeper in, and twine yourself more closely around, 
Christ as the great, immovable Eock of your sal- 
vation. And when that last and strongest gale — 
which blows for all, and overturns many — shall 
bear down upon you, the unification of all your 
powers having been completed, and with every 
thought and purpose and hope of your heart 
purged . and perfected, you will stand triumphant, 
exclaiming, " death, where is thy sting ? O 
grave, where is thy victory ? " 

But, my friend, where will you be in that hour, — 
you who have no Saviour to whom to cling, — 
where ? — N'o, I will not tell you. What does 
your heart say ? What does your conscience say ? 
What does the Bible say ? 

You see, my hearers, what gateway leads to 
peace. The hope, the only hope of it, is Christ, 
the author of all peace, in you, working out the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness. Through faith 
in Him, and in the direction of God's providential 
dealings, the good in your natures gains the as- 
cendant, and the evil gradually retires. Stone by 
stone, and block by block, the temple of your hope 
is rising. Every stone represents a struggle, every 
block a mighty effort. Without God you would 
never have started to build, and without Him 
you can never even now finish. If any soul here 
is looking for peace in any other direction, if he 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 43 

thinks it will come to him in any other way, 
that soul will surely be mistaken. You must 
fight and pray if you would win. The cross, by 
the law of God's appointment, precedes the crown. 
These are trite sayings ; but they express a truth 
which underlies all Christian hope and inspires 
all Christian effort. 

But, friends, do all you may, fight bravely as 
you may, still A^ctory will come only at the set- 
ting of the sun. The land of peace lies on the 
other side of the grave. That is the outer door 
of sombre surface, behind which the gates of solid 
pearl emit their splendor. ]^ever let your minds 
dwell on the grave, — that gateway to a happier 
world, — as over something dark and repellant. In 
ignorance the world draped it in sable, and made 
their funeral gatherings around it with lamenta- 
tions. Xothing short of the resurrection of Christ 
could have dispelled this fear, and stemmed the 
tide of human superstition. In His death He 
made a greater revelation than in His life. 

The tomb had been from the beginning the 
terror of the world, — a deep, dark, impenetrable 
mystery. But Christ did not shrink. He went 
down into the shadow of its silence ; explored its 
unknown recesses ; felt His way along the crum- 
bling edge of His mortality ; threaded the labyrinth 
to its farthest extremity; and, reascending to the 
light, the world beheld Him again. But how did 



44 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

they behold Him ? They beheld Him leading cap- 
tivity captive ! 

He was sov^n in weakness, but He was raised 
in power : He was sown in dishonor, but He was 
raised in glory. 

In the light of that investigation and that re- 
sult we know what the grave is, and its relation 
to the good. 

The world is full of failures which this life can 
never retrieve. Many of you have lost what you 
will never find on the earth, for the waves of 
death have cast it high up on the farther shore. 
Some of you have missed what you most purely 
longed for ; the songs you might have sung fail in 
your throat, and laughter serves to prevent a groan. 
Your early hopes have not been realized, and you 
are now too old to hope. The strings of the harp 
are broken, and it is now too late in the night to 
retune the tangled cords. 

But, friends, let no one of you, in such straits, 
be overmuch discouraged or cast down. Peace 
will yet come to you. Death will bring to you 
the opportunity of a new start. The conditions 
of this mortal life will not pursue you beyond the 
grave. All that hindered, all that burdened, all 
that vexed you here, will be no longer felt. In 
the quiet of its shadow, in the fulness of life 
beyond, the wicked cease from troubling and the 
wearv are at rest. 



THE UNION OF MORAL FORCES. 45 

Thus, by the gradual rectification of our natures 
and the unification of all our powers in holiness, 
and then — as the finishing and perfecting provi- 
dence — the chanoe which death shall work in our 
condition, mankind at last will find their peace. 
Thus God's great plan in Christ, of which the An- 
gels sang, shall be consummated, and peace shall 
be on earth and good-will to man. 

But what is the cause of this peace, and through 
what medium does it primarily come to us ? I 
answer, that the love of God is the cause, and 
belief in Christ is the medium through which it 
comes to every heart that opens to receive it. 

There is not a man, there is not a woman, there 
is not a youth, in this audience this evening, I 
care not how widely you have wandered, nor how 
deeply you have sinned, nor how great has been 
your rebellion, to whom God in his love does not 
come and offer this peace, as secured to you in the 
death of your Saviour. Only drop your hostility, 
only forego your rebellion, only throw down your 
arms, only utter a cry, only make a sign, he says, 
and I will pardon you here and now. This is the 
love of God to you, my hearers, as held by the 
Evangelical churches. Was there ever a love like 
unto it ? Think of your life, now far spent per- 
haps, — your life of neglect, of indifference, of in- 
gratitude, of opposition, and then tell me if you 
have ever known, in father or mother, in husband 



46 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

or wife^ in any friend living or dead, a love to be 
compared to tliis Divine love for you ? There are 
faces back of me over which as they sleep the 
evergreens wave to-day. There are faces which 
nightly by the side of couches and in the flush 
of morning are lifted to heaven for me in prayer. 
They express all that' the human heart may feel 
of love and solicitude for man. Yet in the face 
of Him who lifteth the light of His countenance 
upon me as I speak, I behold the expression of a 
love deeper, a tenderness more tender, a longing 
more* intense, than ever heart of flesh might feel 
or human features express. 

If all these voices should be hushed, all these 
faces averted, all these eyes turned away, the love 
of God for me would still remain unchanged and 
unchangeable. By the ministrations of it while 
I live shall I find all needed support, and at 
death be folded in its embrace forever. 

The centuries seem rolled together as I speak, 
the past becomes the present, and out of the dis- 
tance, like notes of music from afar, swelling into 
the distinctness of utterance as they roll, culmi- 
nating over your heads in benediction, I catch 
once more the song that never dies, — " On earth 
peace, good-will toward men." 



THE KELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 



SERMON III. 

THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 

" Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works 
was faith made perfect? " — James ii. 22. 

THE Apostle is here insisting on the value of 
works and their relation to faith. There is 
a certain earnestness and urgency in every line of 
this chapter which show that James was greatly 
wrought u]Don by his subject. He was evidently 
a very zealous worker himself, and thoroughly 
awake to the importance of Christian activity. 
What a rubbing of eyes and pricking up of ears 
there would be on the part of our drowsy church- 
members if the Apostle could visit Boston in the 
flesh, go down to North Street, and then stand in 
our pulpits and tell the churches what he had 
seen and heard, and what needed to be done in 
this Christian city ! Of all the Apostles I do not 
think that I would surrender my pulpit to any of 
them so willingly as to James. No one can read 
this chapter and not feel that the VTiter was all 
aglow with the conviction that the churches were 
in imminent dangjer. There is a certain tin2;e of 
impatience, of moral indignation, running through 
these passages, as if they were in peril of falling 



48 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

into a fatal error as to wliat constituted Cliristian 
living, and he conld not refrain from telling tliem 
of it. Tliey were in danger, and the danger was 
this, — they were exaggerating the value of an in- 
tellectual belief. They were making religion to 
consist overmuch in mental conception and too 
little in practice. Christianity was becoming a 
matter of the head, and was being divorced from 
the hand and heart. James saw the danger, and 
threw himself across the path of declension and 
said to the churches, " You cannot go a rod far- 
ther in this direction unless you walk over my 
warning and my authority." ISTow I ask the 
thoughtful men and women in this audience if tliis 
is not precisely the peril to which the church is 
exposed to-day. The faith of the Evangelical 
churches is sound enough, the forms of belief are 
correct enough, but the actual working power of 
the churches is dangerously weak. Take a dozen 
or twenty persons out of every hundred of their 
membership, and what would become of the 
churches ? The fact is, — and the sooner we look 
the fact squarely in the face the better it will be 
for Christ and us all, — the fact is, a small minority 
of the church do all the work that is beino; done 
in the church. Many of our religious organiza- 
tions are like unused, reservoirs, into which the 
living; water runs and then stasfnates. The church 
in its internal structure is essentially the same 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 49 

that it was a hundred years ago. It ignores the 
difference between city and country life, between 
agricultural sections and great commercial centres, 
between the wants and opportunities of a small, 
thinly populated parish and the wants and neces- 
sities of a densely crowded metropolis. In its in- 
ternal organization, in its power to give the public 
what it wants, the church is an anachronism. You 
miglit as well think that a hundred wells with 
the old-fashioned bucket and sweep could supply 
this city with water as that you can convert this 
city while your churches use only the same means 
of instruction and reform as were employed fifty 
years ago. The Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tions are a standing protest against the blindness 
and slowness of the churches. They were formed 
by active Christian men, and are working outside 
the church because the church did not attempt the 
work inside itself These bodies of young men 
are doing what the churches should have done. 
Twenty years ago every Evangelical church in 
Boston should have had a young men's Christian 
association in it. What a harvest might have 
been reaped for God, and where might correct doc- 
trine have stood to-day, if the Orthodox churches 
had earned the gratitude of those young men who 
have flocked into this city for the last twenty 
years ! Those young men, now middle-aged, own 
and control one half of Boston to-day. Error will 



50 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

never be headed off here by preaching and pray- 
ing alone. When error represents intellect, when 
it represents philanthropy, when it represents art 
and culture and music, you must fight it with its 
own w^eapons. Match eloquence with eloquence, 
match culture Avith a higher finish, match its phi- 
lanthropy with wider plans and a more generous 
ou.tlay for human weal. Indolence can never 
overcome activity. Lethargy can never conquer 
w^akefulness. Faith can never hold its own against 
works. N'o creed can be as beautiful as good 
deeds. The teaching and the feeding of the mul- 
titude must go together. A belief without any 
adequate expression in acts is like an organ, when 
all its pipes are silent and its keys untouched. It 
is dumb. It charms no one. It attracts no one. 
But bring forth the player ; let him press the keys, 
let the dead air in all the choral columns be started 
into vibrations, and how the anthem swells, and 
how hearts are lifted on the waves of sound, and 
all the thousands applaud, some with their hands, 
others with eyes filled with happy tears. That 
which was dumb has spoken, and the multitude 
hasten to give it praise. 

So it is with a creed. Write it out with whatever 
care you can ; let it be perfect in its phraseology, 
skilful in its definitions, indisputable in its author- 
ity, this and nothing more, — and who cares for it ? 
Does it touch any one's heart ? Does it gain adhe- 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO TRACTICE. 51 

rents ? No. The world will never again figlit 
over words as it once did. There will be no more 
church councils, like the Council of Trent, to 
last twenty years. Men are too busy nowadays 
to spend half a lifetime in debating theological 
dogmas. But bring forth a man who has a good 
creed which he expresses in acts, — let him say, 
" I love God with all my heart, and my neighbor 
as myself," and let him show it, — and men will 
point to him and say, ''A religion which will 
make a man act as Mr. A. does is the religion for 
me." And so religion is honored by his conduct, 
and his creed gains adherents. 

This, then, is what I wish to speak of to you 
this evening, — the refation of a creed, or a set 
form of belief, to practice ; and I hope to show 
that a creed is influential, and influential for good 
upon the practice. 

It is fashionable nowadays to say, *' I don't care 
what a man thinks, if he only acts rightly." 
The better way to put it would be, " I don't care 
what a man thinks, if he don't act rightly." For 
a notoriously bad man has little influence in shap- 
ing public opinion, and hence he can do compara- 
tively little mischief. But a good man has influ- 
ence, and hence his every word becomes potential. 
There are two classes here in the community at 
the present time, both of which are in the wrong. 
The one class is composed of those who exalt 



52 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

the form of belief; loving and valuing creeds in 
themselves considered, disconnected from practice. 
They prize the church for the truths it holds, and 
not for the work it performs. Or, rather, they 
think that if the church is sound in the faith, if 
its doctrinal position is correct, if it holds to the 
form of sound words, — it is doing a great work, it 
is meeting the demands of the age ; and they lis- 
ten with impatience to any criticism which may 
be made of it. They are apt to resent any stric- 
tures upon their conduct as an impertinent, injudi- 
cious, and unwarrantable interference with what 
in their eyes is well enough as it is. ISTow, my 
friends, this position is all wrong. It is essentially 
the same position that James in his epistle to the 
churches so vigorously inveighed against. It is 
elevating faith above works. It is putting too 
much stress upon the form of belief, and too little 
upon its practical expressions. It not only divor- 
ces faith from works, but it arrays the two — which 
by nature are as closely allied as the spring and 
stream — against each other, thereby creating an 
antagonism which does not naturally exist. The 
value of a belief is measured by the same law as 
the value of a well. The question is, not how 
much it will hold, but how much it will yield ; not 
solely as to the purity of the water or the amount 
of it, but the great point is, How much thirst can 
it quench ? how many dying ones can it revive and 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 53 

save ? This is what gives value to a belief ; this 
is what makes Christianity so precious to man. 

The second class who are in error is made up 
of those who say, " The belief is of no importance 
anyway. I do not care what a man thinks, if he 
only acts rightly." Well, friends, there is truth in 
that, and it is because there are some grains of 
truth in it that it is dangerous. The Devil never 
sends his sowers out with bags full of pure tare- 
seeds. He mingles a few dozen tare-seeds in a 
bushel of wheat, and so he gets his evil doctrines 
scattered and sown broadcast in the public mind, 
— scattered, too, by good men who suppose that 
they are sowing nothing but God's own truth all 
the while. 

Now this is the portion of truth in the say- 
ing, " I don't care what a man thinks, if he only 
acts rightly," — namely, a mere sentiment over 
against an act weighs little. A man's opinion 
may affect only himself, but his acts affect society 
at large. A man may think it right to steal ; but 
so long as he refrains from stealing, no one suffers 
but himself because of his opinion. A person 
may think it right to throw a railroad train off 
the track ; but so long as he does not do it, the 
travelling public is not injured. On the other 
hand, a man may be kindly disposed and sympa- 
thetic in words and thoughts ; but if he gives no 
material expression to his charity, who is the bet- 



54 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

ter for it ? The Apostle puts this idea excellently 
in this illustration. It comes down nearer to the 
nineteenth-century style of speaking than almost 
any passage of Scripture. 

"If a brother or sister be naked and destitute 
of daily food, and one of you say unto them, ' De- 
part in peace, be you warmed and filled ' ; notwith- 
standing ye give them not those things which are 
needful to the hody, what doth it profit ? " 

So you see, if James was in the right of it, it 
is what a man actually does that meets the de- 
mands of duty and benefits society. And so far 
they speak truth who say, "It is what a man does, 
and not what he believes, that we care for." But 
the error lies in this, that this form of expression 
overlooks one great point, namely, the close connec- 
tion which exists between believing and doing. It 
ignores the fact that back of every act and as its 
parent is a thought, and that the child is apt to 
be of the same character as the father. Man is a 
thinking and reasoning being. He acts from con- 
victions, or from impulses which are the result of 
previous conviction ; and hence it is that his con- 
duct and his views have a very intimate relation 
to each other. It will not do to say, " I do not care 
what a man thinks," when in fact it is what a man 
thinks that decides how he will act. Going be- 
fore and as the cause of every act is a positive 
mental decision, and eveiy decision is the result of 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 55 

previous education and reflection. To say other- 
wise is to dethrone man and take the sceptre of 
self-sovereignty out of his hand. I want to make 
every young man in this audience feel that it 
makes a vast difference with his life and prospects 
what opinions he forms and what views he adopts ; 
and hence it makes a vast difference what instruc- 
tions and what instructors he has. I want to 
illustrate, on the level of every one's comprehen- 
sion, that it makes a great difference what a man 
thinks, because of the influence which opinion has 
upon practice. 

Take, for instance, one of your city police, to 
test the influence of one's views on his conduct, 
and the relation of the two. Suppose that a po- 
liceman should get it into his head that he is the 
"best and most proper judge of guilt before the law. 
Suppose that he has a very poor opinion of courts 
and judges as agencies to administer law, (and I 
am not so sure that he would differ from many of 
us if he should.) Suppose he should say to him- 
self, " I know what the law is, — where it is right 
and where it is wrong, where it oppresses and 
where it protects with a wise and needed protec- 
tion, and I will administer it myself." He is con- 
scientious in this, as I can conceive a police-offlcer 
might often be, and resolves himself into a judge 
and the station-house into a supreme court, and 
proceeds to adjudicate on every case that comes 



66 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

within his cognizance, — tries one, exonerates an- 
other, sends the third to prison, and hangs the 
fourth, — takes the entire administration of law 
into his own hands ; — does it honestly, does it be- 
cause he feels it to be the best thing for the city. 
What would you men say to it ? What would the 
law-making and law-interpreting power say to such 
conduct ? Say ! They would say that such usur- 
pation of undelegated authority strikes at the very 
root of all government. 'Not would the justice 
of the officer's decision affect the matter at all. 
Crime might be the more swiftly and surely pun- 
ished, but the evil of his conduct would remain 
the same. The virtue and efficiency of the man 
would tell all the deadlier against free institutions. 
A just tyrant is the worst of tyrants. So you see 
that it does make a difference what a man thinks, 
if he happens to be on the police force. 

Or, again, take a merchant as an illustration. 
Let him be a man whose sole ambition is to amass 
wealth, who halts at nothing, provided it will bring 
him money, and not subject him to imprisonment. 
He laughs at honesty ; ridicules integrity as an old- 
fashioned and obsolete idea ; cheats and swindles 
and steals, only in such a way that the law cannot 
get its grip on him. Take such a man, — one of 
your prosperous villains, — and what is the effect 
of his life and practice ? In the first place, I answer, 
sucli a man degrades business, and brings a stigma 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 57 

upon an otherwise honorable pursuit. He assists 
also to debauch public sentiment, and lower the 
tone of public morals. He gives to commercial 
life an ignoble object, and inspires young men, 
dazzled with his successful trickery, with a base 
ambition. He sets a bad example to every one of 
his clerks, to every young business man in the 
city; and thereby does much to make its busi- 
ness character bad, not merely for the present, but 
for the future. A man whose virtue is supported 
on one side by the fear of public opinion and by 
the terror of the jail on the other, who swindles 
honest men by " cornering " some railroad stock, 
and withholds from the government a portion of 
his taxable income, is a cheat and a public peril. 
Such a man, like any other nuisance, ought to be 
abolished. So you see that it makes a difference 
what a man believes if he happens to be a merchant. 
Or, again, take a judge. Let liim be a man in- 
different as to justice, caring only for the salary 
and emolument of liis office, unbraced by any 
nice sense of official obligation, — such a judge as 
some of our cities are cursed with, who sit like an 
incubus on the neck of our jurisprudence, stran- 
gling and loading it down with the weight of their 
iniquitous decisions so heavily that it can barely 
keep its feet and stagger along, — a judge who 
holds the balance in one hand, while the other is 
busy is taking bribes. Take such a judge, I say, 

3* 



58 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and tell me if it does not make a difference what 
a man's views are ; if it is so small a matter, after 
all, what opinion a man holds and what theory of 
leoi'al administration he believes in ? 

Well, society is not composed solely of police- 
men and merchants and judges, but nearly every 
person exerts .more or less influence upon it ; and 
what is true of one is true of all, that what a man 
thinks decides in a great measure what a man 
does, and so it is of vast importance to the commu- 
nity that every member of it should have proper 
views and hold to proper opinions. By as much as 
men are ignorant and prejudiced, by as much as 
they have wrong views of government, by so much 
will their actions be wrong and their influence hurt- 
ful. And in nothing else is this so evident as in 
matters of religion ; and upon no other thing is it 
so essential that the public should be rightly in- 
formed as concerning its views of God and those 
relations which spring from his control over us. 

Now in this city, unfortunately, there exists a 
difference of opinion concerning some of the princi- 
pal truths of revelation. I say that this is unfortu- 
nate ; for both parties cannot be in the right, and 
therefore the influence of the one or the other 
class must be hurtful. 

You may take the matter of the divinity of 
Christ. A majority of the city hold that Christ is 
divine, that is, truly God. A minority, on the 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 59 

other hand, respectable in point of numbers, and 
of considerable influence, hold that Christ was 
simply a human being ; or rather (for there is great 
latitude of opinion among their own members), 
that He was a created being, and, being a creature, 
less than God. Some hold that He was purely 
and simply a man like Socrates or Plato or John 
Brown, while others maintain that He was a supe- 
rior being, an angel, a prince among angels per- 
haps, but in no sense divine. 

I am not to repeat before you to-night the 
evidences of Christ's divinity. I have not tlie 
time, nor does the object I have in view in this 
discourse require me to do it. I simply wish to 
make the statement, to show the difference of opin- 
ion between these two classes, and the difference 
that it must make in one's conduct whether a 
person thinks that Christ was God in the flesh 
or simply a man. 

On the one hand, if He was simply a man, then 
the entire significance of the ISTew Testament is 
changed from what it is if Christ is God ; for it 
makes a great difference in my mind and yours, 
in my life and yours, whether the central figure 
w^hich moves through all its history and gives its 
dignity to it, is God in human form, or a mere 
man, — simply one of the millions of the human 
race. When Christ speaks, it makes — and I can- 
not prevent it — a great difference, in my views of 



60 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

Him, whether I regard His words as the utterance 
of the Deity Himself, or the expression of an indi- 
vidual opinion ; when He says, alluding to God, " I 
and my Father are one," I must decide, in order to 
know what to think and do, whether it is the calm 
statement of conscious divinity, or nothing but the 
extravagant and blasphemous assertion of a Gali- 
lean peasant ; and the influence of the N'ew Tes- 
tament on my life, in shaping my daily conduct, 
is largely decided by what I think of Christ. For, 
as all of you will admit, Christ is so intimately 
connected with it. He is so much the light and 
life of it, that my regard and reverence for it rises 
or sinks with my opinion of Him. He is the col- 
umn around which all its history, its precepts, its 
doctrines, are twined ; and with the fall of the 
central shaft all the pendent surroundings are 
cast in one tangled and disordered mass to the 
ground. If a man, then is the Sermon on the 
Mount no more to me than the dialoerue of 
Socrates with his friends in the prison before he 
drank the fatal cup, or the speculations of Plato. 
If God, then is it the utterance of Heaven itself, 
and I regard it as the supreme expression vouch- 
safed to man for the government of his disposi- 
tions and the salvation of his soul. 

Or, again, if Christ is God, then is He the fit ob- 
ject of prayer and worship, and my soul can go to 
Him as unto the ultimate object of its desires and 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 61 

adoration. If only a created being, then is it sin 
for me to address Him in prayer and praise ; for 
we are solemnly forbidden to worship any but God 
alone. 

My friends, be pleased to observe I am not ar- 
guing the matter. I am simply stating to you, 
impartially, certain facts, and deducing from them 
certain conclusions, to which I think all of you 
who are intelligent and candid must assent. And 
my point is to show, not what we should believe 
of Christ, but that it makes a great difference with 
ourselves and others what we do think. It is not 
a matter of little importance, but of the most sol- 
emn interest to every one of you, and not alone to 
you, but to all those, your children and friends, 
upon whom, by example and instruction, you have 
influence. And I hope none of you will ever say, 
"0, it don't make much difference what you 
think about Christ, if you only act rightly." For 
it does make a vast difference. First, because we 
should think of Him nothing but what is truth, 
neither adding to nor detracting from his dignity. 
And, secondly, because our action toward Him de- 
pends very much on what we think of Him. 

Now, I wish to mention one other point of disa- 
greement in public opinion here, concerning relig- 
ious matters, in further illustration of my theme. 
It is this. There are those who say that, spirit- 
ually, men are not by nature very badly off, and 



62 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

that when the Bible insists on repentance and 
faith as the sole conditions of salvation, the ex- 
pression is not to be taken literally. As men are 
not very bad by nature, they do not need a Sa\dour, 
and little anxiety need be felt about the matter 
any way. 

Another class maintain that men by nature are 
very badly off; so badly that they are lost, that 
is, morally alienated from and opposed to God, 
throuc^h whose favor alone salvation can come. 
That a great change is needed, on the part of every 
soul, to fit it for heaven ; that this change can be 
secured by accepting of certain terms published in 
the Gospels, and in no other way; and hence a 
most urgent duty rests upon every person to exam- 
ine into the matter and make a positive decision. 

Now there, in substance, are the two positions ; 
there are the two beliefs. Suppose that they are 
held in equal sincerity, and observe the influence 
of each upon the believer. 

This is one of those fortunate methods of inves- 
tigation where the inquirer can reach a conclusion 
as accurate as a mathematical definition. You all 
see, at a glance, what is the legitimate effect of 
each of these beliefs upon the mind and heart. 

The tendency of the first is to remove all anx- 
iety from the mind concerning one's own spirit- 
ual condition, or that of others, and lessen to a 
corresponding extent the motive to act. For no 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 63 

one will warn or entreat another, nnless he is 
persuaded there is peril ahead. And it is the 
law, both of self-preservation and solicitude for 
others, that the effort put forth is commensurate 
with the felt imminence of the danger. 

The legitimate result of the other belief upon 
the mind is to deepen the impression of dan- 
ger, provoke investigation, and elicit effort. And 
here, too, as the belief is sincerely held and the 
awful truth in its fulness apprehended, will the 
effort tally wdth the conviction. All missionary 
effort now being put forth in the world, all per- 
sonal solicitude felt for friends, is inspired by this 
motive, — to save men from a threatening peril. 
There is not a prayer uttered, there is not a peti- 
tion sent up to Heaven's throne, there is not an 
anxiety felt, there is not a loving endeavor made, 
for man's conversion that has not this fear, this 
belief, for its parent and source. This, too, is the 
origin of that sublime motive which keeps the 
gospel ministry full of faithful laborers. Back of 
me, ever, as I speak to you, as a vast energy push- 
ing me ever on, and holding me ever up, is the 
thought that many of you are in danger of living 
and dying unreconciled to God ; and that I am set 
to warn and persuade you, and bring you penitent 
and rejoicing to our common and loving Father's 
presence. Do you think that any young man of 
capacity — which always carries with it ambition — 



64 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

would deny himself the honors, the possible 
wealth, and, what is stronger yet with men, the 
keen exhilaration of secular life, and devote him- 
self to teaching men the way of salvation, unless 
he felt that men were in danger, — a danger from 
which he might possibly save them ? 

My friends, it is because I believe that many 
of you are in peril that I am here to-night. It 
was the conviction that men were morally wrong 
by nature, and liable to make an eternal wreck of 
themselves, and that I might possibly, by God's 
aid, save some of them, that I put my foot on the 
dream of my life, and entered a profession which 
was by no means my first choice. It is this thought 
and hope which hold me to-day in a position 
which, left to my own inclination, I would that 
any other man filled. I dare to say that many a 
young man in the ministry wishes that he was 
pastor of a city church, and is planning for the day 
when he shall be. He knows nothing of what he 
desires. A city life, as many of you by dire ex- 
perience know, is a grinding kind of a life. It 
grinds the hope and life and vigor out of a man. 
It wrinkles the face, and whitens the head, and 
puts burdens upon men beyond what flesh and 
blood can bear. It taps and exhausts all the re- 
served forces of one's nature. It destroys all indi- 
viduality, and makes a man to be no more than 
one ant amid countless numbers of its kind. And 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 65 

there are few of you here who are under its influ- 
ence, who feel the cruel and pitiless friction of 
its ponderous and ever-revolving pressure settling 
with every year more heavily upon you as it re- 
volves, but that long for the quiet and rest, the 
healthy toil, the broad scope and free air, of the 
country. And were it not for the duties and re- . 
sponsibilities which bind us here, many of us 
would break away and escape forever from what 
we feel is slowly but surely killing us. The duty 
which brought and keeps me here is born of this 
thought, I say, that many in this city are morally 
in a wrong position, and that I must go as a broth- 
er, prompted by love, to tell them of their danger. 
I fear that many of you in this audience are not 
spiritually right and at peace with God ; your lives 
are not such lives as you might live, and as you 
ought to live, and I am here to tell you of it, and 
warn you of a danger you do not see. My friends, 
there are gales on the ocean, and your ships are 
not prepared for storm. You are blind to the 
lightning and deaf to the angry mutterings of the 
thunder. The heavens are black over your heads, 
and the swell of a coming tempest begins to make 
itself felt in your fears, and I charge you to-night 
to seek the help of Him who alone can walk the 
waters you soon must sail, who alone can break 
the bank which rolls up toward you black and 
heavy with destruction, and scatter it in golden 



66 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

mist. There is but one safe pilot on the river of 
death : he is Christ. There is but one voice able 
to say to the elements which threaten to engulf 
you, " Peace, be still ! " It is the voice of Him 
who of old rebuked the Galilean surge. He who 
preaches salvation to men who cannot be lost 
stultifies his intelligence, and spends his life for 
naugjht. 

I have thus from several directions brought 
you down to a common conclusion, and you all 
see and say with me that it does make a vast 
difference what a man believes. It makes a dif- 
ference with a police-officer, and with the mer- 
chant, and with the judge, and with the preacher ; 
for it decides what his conduct and teaching shall 
be. Back of all loose practice, and as a parent 
of it, you will find, by searching, a loose opinion 
What we think is a spur to what we shall do, and 
all action is but the result of previous decision. 

Were this not true, of what value would educa- 
tion be ? What would it matter whether we were 
educated rightly or wrongly ? Of what use would 
the mind itself be ? Why carry so costly a pilot 
as reason, if it matters not whether we steer this 
way or that ? 

Here in our midst is a mighty force moving us 
as the wind moves the ship, and according to the 
direction and force of it are we blown to favor and 
fortune or the reverse. We call it public opinion. 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 67 

It is mightier than law ; for it can take the strong- 
est and best law ever enacted, and make it of no 
more account than a piece of parchment, that a 
child can tear with its fincfers and cast to the 
winds. It is mightier than governments ; for it 
can level thrones and change constitutions. It is 
mightier than all armies ; for it speaks, and at its 
word armies melt away, — one returning to his 
shop, another to his farm, and another to his mer- 
chandise. Yea, it is mightier than the church it- 
self ; for creeds and covenants yield to its touch, 
and orders, sacred with the sanction of centuries, 
at its command yield their existence and pass for- 
ever away. But what is public opinion, and of 
what is its mighty energy composed ? It is made 
up, my friend, in part of what you and I think. 
There is not a vibration in the air but that can 
contribute something to the hurricane, and make 
its rush fiercer and its roar more to be dreaded. 
There is not a single beam of all the myriads that 
the sun sends out that does not increase our com- 
fort, and make the earth healthier and happier. 
And so there is not a thought of our minds, there 
is not a dream of our life, there is not a word of 
our lips, which does not enter that vast volume 
of power called public opinion, — enter to make 
it stronger for good or for evil. It is a question 
of public importance, therefore, what you and I 
believe. It affects society and the world at large. 



68 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

It affects men's lives here and their destiny here- 
after, what we think of the Bible and of Christ, 
who in it is called the Lord and Saviour of all. 
I wish you to understand, therefore, that, in the 
long run, neither your own acts nor the acts of 
those whom you influence will be better in charac- 
ter than your thoughts. If you are mean and 
bigoted and envious and spiteful in your thoughts 
of men, you will very likely be the same in your 
acts toward them. If you are a business-man, 
and dishonest in trade, you are educating all your 
clerks in dishonesty, and doing all you can to de- 
grade and debauch business in this city, and peo- 
ple it with dishonest tradesmen ten years from 
now. You are not only giving a bad character to 
the city to-day, but deciding that it shall continue 
bad. And now what need I say further ? You 
came here to be taught and quickened in mind 
and heart, and I have done what I might to help 
you touching the matter discussed. The pleasant- 
est thought of my ministry here is, that you who 
make up my audience from evening to evening do 
not come to sleep, but to think, — that mind and 
heart and enterprise have here an audience. I 
dare say that some of you do not always agree 
with me, and that you who do not are sometimes 
in the right ; but this does not stir a ripple of fear 
as to the result. For the more men who are striv- 
ing to grow in the understanding of every duty, 



THE RELATION OF BELIEF TO PRACTICE. 69 

and to get at the root of things, — the more such 
men think and investigate, the nearer will they 
come together ; for truth is a fixed point, and all 
who seek it — no matter how widely they be apart 
— must inevitably converge. The people who butt 
against each other are those who run about blind- 
fold. 

And now, friends, you who are of like theological 
opinions w4th myself, know this, that the great les- 
son for us to learn is, how to express more of Chris- 
tian spirit in our acts. AVe are to let the world, we 
are to let this city, see, not what our faith is, nor 
what our works are, but how our faith works with 
our works, and is to them what the sun is to the 
rose, — the source of its color and fragrance. I am 
convinced more and more that it is not by logic 
and argument and verbal demonstration that Christ 
is to be set forth to the intellect and heart and 
conscience of this city. ISTor by denunciation and 
Pharisaical isolation can ignorance be enlightened 
and enmity converted to friendship. We must 
raise the level of our lives ; we must widen and 
deepen the channel of sympathy for man ; we 
must so act that Christ shall have, as it were, a 
second incarnation in our own persons, — or ever 
that banner, which is white as an angel's wing, 
lifted by universal suffrage here, shall wave un- 
challens^ed over all. If evangelical doctrines are 
better than other doctrines, then should the lives 



70 . MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

of those who hold them be better, their charity 
wider, their love for man warmer, their zeal great- 
er, and their acts, more than the acts of other men, 
like His to whom they claim to have come nearer 
in the understanding of His truth. To this test, I 
warn you, evangelical religion must eventually 
come for measurement. In this balance, before its 
adherents find opponents, I confess to-night it is 
just that it shall be weighed. For the resources of 
statement were exhausted centuries ago when Christ 
declared, " By their fruits ye shall know them." 

Here and with this plummet, then, we at last 
touch bottom. Before such a demonstration of 
the value of our belief error could not live. So 
far as it was honest, it would be converted ; so 
far as it was only cunning and wickedness, it would 
be detected and despised. Let that religion which 
is the quickest to feed the hungry, to clothe the 
naked, to enlighten ignorance, to lift the fallen, to 
cheer the hopeless, — and which has the most char- 
ity toward its enemies, be the future religion of this 
city. Write it over the doors of all your churches 
in characters that shall never fade ; print it as the 
caption of every profession of faith ; teach it to 
your children ; proclaim it to the winds, and 
charge them to bear it to every land, — that here- 
after in this city he who loveth man the best is the 
truest disciple of Christ, and the best representative 
of God. Let this be our creed ; and we invoke this 
as the final test, in the years ahead, of our faith. 



TO YOUNG MEN. 71 

SEEMON lY. 

TO YOUNG MEN. 

" I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, 
and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the 
wicked one." — 1 John ii. 14. 

THE idea of strengtli is intimately connected 
with youth. Age is the synonyme of weak- 
ness, — at least, of diminished vigor. The human 
frame with its once hardy flesh and swelling sinews 
shrunk and shrivelled, the erectness of its stature 
gone, the lustreless eye, the tremulous hand, the 
unsteady knees, — these speak of vigor departed, of 
motion checked, of beauty fled. They suggest the 
settling of the current, and the ebbing of the vital 
powers. 

But youth is strong. Neither weakness nor de- 
cay belong to it. It is full of growth and facile 
movements. Observe a grove of trees when in 
green, luxuriant prime. How lithe and flexile ! 
With trunk sunk like a firmly set pillar deeply 
in earth, braced and fastened by a hundred lat- 
eral and far-reaching supports, and with branches 
whose beginnings are in its very heart, stretching 
wide out on either side, pliant and tough, each 
tree, with tossing top and streaming foliage, stands 
against the blast tremulous with delight, and 



72 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

laughing defiance at the wind. What cares such 
a tree for the gale ? It meets it like a broad- 
chested man, inhaling new life and vigor from its 
violence, and tosses its flexile branches against 
it in disdain. How often we have all seen such 
trees, and sat and watched them sway and bend, 
stoop and rise, while every leaf stood out straight 
as a streaming flag ! Such trees type the qualities 
and characteristics of youth. 

Take a young man inured to toil, — I do not 
mean a slim, fragile lad, such as are nestled in 
babyhood in the suffocating down of your cities, 
but such as were rocked on the hard oaken floor of 
the country, — broad in the chest, with shoulders 
thick and square. Bare his breast and neck. Wliat 
breadth, what fulness ! See how the blue veins 
cross it, taut with healthy blood ! Turn his head, 
and observe how with the motion the great ridges 
of the well-twisted cords come out. Lift the arm ; 
move it up and down in the socket, and mark the 
play of the tough sinews. Watch the face with 
its broad brow, the keen, lively eyes, the crisp 
beard, the wide, squarely set jaw. Who has ever 
looked on such a piece of God's creative power, 
and not marvelled ? And who of us, with such a 
picture in our mind, wonders that the Apostle 
should say, " I have written unto you, young men, 
because ye are strong " ? 

Well, this idea of jstrength, of capacity, suggests 



TO YOUNG MEN. 73 

the sequent idea of responsibility. For youth is 
not sluggish, nor is its strength unexercised. But 
no one puts forth strength, — no one whose life 
has a river-like motion to it, — but incurs re- 
sponsibility. A life which flows through society, 
sweeping all before it, lifting everything up on it, 
is somethinf]f to w^atch and direct arisjht. It is 
easy to imagine that John had this in mind when 
he wrote this Epistle, and said, " I have wTitten 
unto you, young men, because ye are strong," ac- 
tive, and hence responsible. 

Perhaps, generally speaking, the thought of his 
responsibility is not the uppermost one in a young 
man's mind, as he plunges into the bustle and 
excitement of an active life. Fame, wealth, per- 
sonal appearance, how he can best enjoy himself, 
— these and the like are the thoucrhts which fill 
his mind and inspire him with motive power. He 
looks upon the present, with all its richly tinted 
clusters of sensuous pleasure, as free to his hand, 
and that he has a perfect right to seize and drain 
them into his cup. Of the remote influence of 
his action, either upon himself or others, he rarely, 
if ever, thinks. He forgets, or does not wish to 
remember, the effect of his conduct and example 
for good or evil upon the community ; but such 
thoughtlessness, such forgetfulness of moral obli- 
gation, is cognizable by justice. God never framed 
one law of responsibility for the old and another 

4 



74 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

for the young ; and never are men so responsible, 
never are they so worthy or unworthy, never so 
royally justified or so fearfully condemned, as 
when their brains are the most active, their bodies 
the strongest, and the current of their life at its 
fullest flood and flow. 

Now, this idea of responsibility is not calculated 
when rightly considered, to fetter and gag a man, 
and does not. He who feels it, having conceived of 
it rightly, energizes none the less, and laughs none 
the less. And I am never more vexed than at the 
views hypochondriacal people have upon this 
point. There is too much of this feeling extant, 
that the eye of God is on a man just to ascertain 
when he can punish. God is a kind and loving 
father, acting on the level of our sonship with 
Him in Christ, and not a keen-eyed, heartless 
ovefseer, standing over us whip in hand, goading 
us to unpaid toil, and finding joy in our looks of 
fear and terror. It is a crying shame that in the 
full, mellow light of the Gospel, which has warmed 
the earth with a genial and fructifying warmth 
these two thousand years, men and women should 
be found lashing themselves like mediaeval monks, 
and talking as if penance is piety, and slavish 
self-denial discipleship. Nothing so favors self- 
righteousness as the opinion that severe regimen 
and mean clothes and pharisaical exactness give 
evidence of adoption. These folks will find, in 



TO YOUNG MEN. 75 

the great hour of transition, that it was Christ's 
blood, and not their severe morality, their crabbed 
and unamiable strictness, that saved them. I of- 
ten think that some good people I know will fancy 
for a moment, after they have been wafted into 
the singing and jubilant throngs, that the upbear- 
ing and attendant angels have dro]3ped them a 
little too soon and in the .wrong spot, so happy 
and cheerful will the faces around them be. And 
what if the harps should have a livelier tone, and 
the jubilant hands less solemnity of gesture, than 
accorded with their notion of heavenly action on 
earth ! 

No, the love of God toward us, my friends, is 
not a kind of severe charity, breaking the bread 
of his bounty only to the deserving and to those 
whose lives are cut after the strictest regulation 
pattern ; but a warm, genial sentiment, rather, feed- 
ing without question and without rebuke all the 
hungry and the faint who will accept of its blessed 
provision ; yea, casting far and near on the waters 
of life that bread which, if once eaten, forbids fur- 
ther hunfyer forever. 

Revelation is not the only fountain out of which 
the waters of His healing flow, and in which His 
face and form are mirrored. Nature, in other col- 
ors, and from a less palpable negative, prints Him 
to the eye. The flowers and grasses, the stars, and 
every lovely sight and sweet smell we see or in- 



76 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

hale, are of Him. In tliem you see the Divine na- 
ture working itself out in all manner of beautiful 
colors and forms, — the same nature that gave us 
in compassion Christ, and yearns to-night, beyond 
the yearning of a dying wife for her absent hus- 
band, over every erring sinner in this audience or 
in the world. 

Be it remembered, then, that the responsibility 
which a young man incurs by his every word and 
act, be it never so grave, is not a feeling to repress 
him. The requirements of God are not like so 
many withes bound tightly around the limbs, con- 
gealing the blood and benumbing the senses. The 
grace of God enlarges every part of a man, as 
moisture and warmth do a tree. A Christian not 
only grows in the fulfilment of duty, but in the 
enjoyment of it as well. He is not only taught 
how to touch one string and call forth one note, 
but he sweeps the cords of a harp whose strings 
are multitudinous, and whose ever-growing volume 
and richness of tone are a daily surprise to him. 
His conscience is not only rendered more acute, 
but his susceptibilities of enjoyment are more keen 
and abundant. Grace acts on the soul, as water 
on a sponge. It puts it into a condition to absorb 
and take in more than before it was thus mois- 
tened and made yielding. Hence it is that a man 
feels more and better, acts more and better, has 
larger hopes and keener joys, is more companion- 



TO YOUNG JIEN. 77 

able, charitable, and generous, as lie grows heaven- 
ward. Thus it comes about, in the case of young 
men, that God does not seek to check the strong 
tides of feeling which throb and swell in their 
veins. He welcomes them, as the miller hails 
with joy the rush and roar of torrents in the hills 
above. The aspirations of youth, the ambition of 
early manhood, are the \ery waters with which 
he drives the wheels of a thousand activities, and 
sets a thousand spindles in motion. God does 
not want stagnation, but movement, impulse, ac- 
tion, the whir of wheels and the whiz of belts, by 
the well-directed force of wliich the woof and web 
of His formative providence are growing day by 
day. . 

But while this idea of responsibility should not 
repress a man, should not fetter or gag him, it 
should quicken him to great caution and care. It 
is with a man as with a horse. Speed, vigor, fire, 
while they enhance his value, call for the exercise 
of great watchfulness on the part of the driver. 
Blood and spirit are excellent in a horse ; but it 
needs a taut line, a strong bit, and a steady hand 
to guide such. But, in spite of this, who, with 
any sense of judgment, any appreciation of noble 
qualities, would choose an old, rickety, shambling 
hack in preference to a deep-chested, strongly 
hipped roadster, that will go swinging along at the 
rate of twelve miles to the hour without tirino:, — 



78 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

or a gay, foxy-looking animal, with the blood of the 
desert coursing beneath his velvet hide, and with 
a motion so swift and a look so spirited, that as 
you watch him you say with delight, " The old 
fable is true, — that horse was born of the wind and 
the sunshine." And so it is in the case of young 
men. Away with your dull, sluggish, and inert 
natures, that are content to doze life away in the 
same narrow sphere their fathers filled, and who 
bring out in all their living nothing higher or 
more noble than a poor repetition of the past ! 

If there is one thing which Christianity favors 
more than all else, it is this, — future improvement 
on what has been. In the Scripture doctrine of 
the millennium human effort finds its highest in- 
citement and human progress its amplest vindica- 
tion. Erom this doctrine, alike applicable to every 
age, as from an unfailing cruse, the lamps which 
have lighted men forward, have ever been filled. 
The fact that there is to be a state of morals purer 
than the world has yet reached, and a state of cul- 
ture higher than the mind has yet achieved, proves 
that we must go on. By this sublime prediction, 
man, whether willing or unwilling, is pushed, as 
with the hand of a giant, to greater things than he 
has yet attained. The beautiful thing about 
Christianity is that it improves the individual 
man. It elevates the masses through the dissem- 
ination of personal virtues. It begins with one 



TO YOUNG MEN. 79 

man and in one heart, and reforms it, and then 
multiplies this one result into thousands by the 
same process. The human race — each contam- 
inated soul in it, made to be the temple of the 
Holy Ghost — is to be renovated, as houses are in 
an infected city, one by one. Eeligion means the 
cleansing of what now is soiled, the straightening 
of what now is crooked, the widening of what is 
nan'ow and cramped. It means progress, develop- 
ment, invention. Now every young man should 
keep this in mind. He should forget what is be- 
hind, and reach forward to that w^hich is ahead. 
The past is dark, sombre, unsatisfactory, — like a 
bank of clouds silvery as to its upper edges, and 
crossed here and there with lanes of crimson ; but, 
on the whole, suggestive of cheerless fogs and chill- 
ing rain. The future, like a clear azure-tinted sky, 
such as a golden sunset gives us after a day of storm, 
illuminated from unseen sources, with its enlarged 
activities, its ever-widening possibilities, in which 
Christ is to stand in the majesty of a universal 
and a universally acknowledged sovereignty, is 
what should inspire and constrain you. No young 
man should be content to be as his father is. We 
have never had moral forces enough in the world 
to convert the wx)rld. That, at least, is certain. 
The millennium will never be reached by a repro- 
duction of what has been. He should be wiser 
and better than his father. He should know more 



80 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

of God and do more for man. He should stand 
one grade higher, in all that ennobles character, 
than any of his name who have gone before him. 
Over this road, wide as hope itself, and macad- 
amized with promises of the Most High, the gen- 
erations of the future are to march until they 
shall come to that city whose maker and builder 
is God, whose walls are salvation and whose Gates 
are praise. 

I know that occasionally you hear some be- 
moaning the present, and growling out dissatis- 
faction with everything modern. Owlish by na- 
ture, they perch themselves above ruins, and croak 
their dismal cries over departed greatness. To 
such, the age which has seen more conversions to 
Christ than any preceding is the most wicked, 
and the fifty years that have built more school- 
houses and colleges than half as many centuries 
before are the years in which wisdom and virtue 
have been rapidly declining. But who cares for 
such croakers ? If the owl and the bat can toler- 
ate them, w^e can. We know that their predic- 
tions are only such as the graves have ever made 
to the cradles. God's providence never halts, 
never retires. Eailroads and the telegraph have 
not backed us into the Dark Ages. Free schools 
and free Bibles and free governments are not so 
many clean victories for the Devil. As the rods 
which Agassiz planted at the foot of the glacier. 



TO YOUNG MEN. 81 

and which he found on his return had blossomed, 
revealed how far the icy mass had receded, so our 
progressive enterprises and institutions, the rods 
which God has struck into this age, reveal how 
fast and how far the ponderous mass of ignorance 
and superstition has melted and is melting away 
under the potent influence of the Gospels. 

Say, then, young men, knowing that you speak 
on the reliable basis of facts, say to all these 
shrivelled, mummified specimens of despondency, 
" Croak as you please ; refuse to see if you will 
that the skies are bright and the grasses green ; 
shut your eyes to the Godlike upward tendencies 
in man, which, inspired and strengthened by faith 
in Christ, are lifting the race heavenward : yet 
never was there an age so rich in the realizations 
of that hope which is an anchor, so blessed in the 
actual possession of liberty, or so auspicious w^ith 
promise touching the future, as this in which you 
live and in which you ought to rejoice." 

The very earnest repetition by the Apostle of 
this same idea emphasizes his solicitude for that 
portion of the church included in the phrase 
" young men." One reason of his anxiety may be 
found in the fact that this class is a very im- 
portant one to the Church. From it she draws 
her teachers, and though her servants age and die, 
the ministry is always full. It is on young men 
also that she most relies to push her benevolent 

4* F 



82 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

enterprises among the nnregenerate and ungodly, 
and to conduct the more active canvassing inci- 
dental to seasons of great religious awakening. A 
church without a corps of efficient young men in it 
is like a tree without branches, or a ship without 
sails. But, on the other hand, let no one suppose 
— as some, I fear, do — that this class can meet all 
the requirements of a religious organization. The 
older are as necessary for the proper administra- 
tion of affairs as the younger members. To con- 
tinue the preceding figure, the aged are to the 
church and to the younger members themselves 
what the .trunk is to the branches. They give to 
the organization stability, dignity, strength ; and 
if the fruit is found upon the outlying branches, 
is it not because the parent trunk kindly sends 
the vitalizing sap out to them ? The fact is, these 
two classes should w^ork in loving and helpful con- 
junction. Any divorcement in acts or sympathy 
is unwarranted and hazardous. Any organization 
in which the two are not joined labors at a vast 
disadvantage. Spiritual forces depend in part on 
experience and character, and these do not come 
to one in a day. No church, for instance, can 
afford to dispense with the prayers of the more 
aged of her membership. There is a certain reach 
of thought, a certain profound apprehension of 
God's mercy and of human need, which seems to 
come only to the weakened and those who feel that 



TO YOUNG MEN. 83 

they are nigli to their graves. In ancient times 
and in certain countries no man could ask a favor 
of his monarch until he could show a scar; and 
nothing so lifts one up as to hear a battle-scarred 
veteran of God plead for favors in the presence of 
his king. Each word goes up as the cry of one 
hard pressed before and behind with foes. It is 
the voice of one who, feeling that he stands on a 
treacherous element, cries, " Help, Lord, or I sink." 
Young Christians never get that cry, and never 
can, until time, and trouble, and conflict with the 
adversary have revealed his niiglitiness and their 
frailty. 

There is another thought which aids us to esti- 
mate the value of young men to the church, and 
reveals why, like John, we should feel solicitous 
concerning them. It is this, — they keep the 
church progressiA'e, and thus make it attractive to 
the masses, thereby adding to its efficiency. Let 
it be remembered that the race has risen in im- 
provement, not as a inan is lifted bodily by pul- 
leys, but as one mounts a ladder, step by step, one 
round at a time. Now each generation is such a 
round. The world, in its progress upward, stands 
for a moment upon one, and is upheld by it, and 
then passes up and puts its weight on the next 
above. By this order of growth, the hope of the 
world is ever kept buoyant, its sympathies deep, 
and its faith active ; for it is perpetually renewing 



84 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

its yoTitli. In this law of growth the Church espe- 
cially shares. She must share in it, or else come to 
a dead stand. Go back to her origin, and recall 
her history. The Church, as organized in Christ, 
was not an army of defence, for she had nothing 
to defend, but an army of invasion recruited for 
the express purpose of attack and capture. Her 
banners are not such as float over the walls of a 
citadel or an intrenched camp, but, rather, such as, 
held in bravely uplifted hands, stream fluttering 
out along the line of battle and above the heads 
of charging columns, crowding to death or victory. 
This fact it is which reveals why a bold, wide- 
awake, progressive church is so effective in its in- 
fluence upon the world. Great success does not 
surprise such a church. Plans based upon the 
expectation of such success do not appall it. 
It provides accommodation ahead of its present 
wants and the wants of the public. It heightens 
and lengthens its dam, that no unused water es- 
cape. It adds wheel to wheel and stone to stone, 
that no water lie stagnant in the meadows above ; 
and even then, not content, still eager, filled with 
divine expectation, it looketh continually unto 
the hills from whence cometh its strength for 
fresh and fuller outpourings of power-bestowing 
grace. Would that we had more such churches ! 
I fear that nothing would surprise some of our 
churches so much as a revival. Should the heaven 



TO YOU^'G MEN. 85 

open, and the wind-like Spirit of God come down 
upon them in power, it would take, in their aston- 
ishment the very breath out of their bodies ! 

Now, friends, in an earnest, progressive church, 
young men always are, and must, from the very 
nature of things, be prominent. Any attempt at 
repression against this class on the part of the 
office-bearers of the church, any policy or manage- 
ment that shall alienate it, is as if a man should 
extract the blood-supphdng elements from his 
food and expect to live. Such management, such 
administration of affairs, whether the managers 
realize it or not, no matter how honest the motive, 
is simply church suicide. It speedily becomes a 
poor, withered, and fruitless thing. The Church in 
her aspirations, in liberality of opinion, in charity 
of judgment, in soul and body saving activity, 
must be kept in the van of the age. If you 
would direct a stream, you must channel ahead of 
it, and not attempt to log up with obstructions its 
irresistible flow. The more orthodox a church is, 
the more wide-awake and progressive it should 
be, — the more ballast, the more sail. The more 
stanchly it adheres to essentials, the more lib- 
eral it should be in respect to non-essentials. A 
church need not fear any amount of lateral swing- 
ing and swaying so long as the anchor of its faith 
is struck deep into the Eock Christ Jesus. Het- 
erodoxy has won nearly all her triumphs on side 



86 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

issues and by that greatest blunder of Orthodoxy, 
— its stand-still-and-do-nothingism. She has filled 
her granaries from fields we should have reaped, 
and out of the quarries we should have worked 
for the Lord she has hewn the material for her 
structure. 

l^ow, the value of this young element in the 
church is that it will prevent this blunder from 
being rej)eated. The man who stumbles twice at 
the same stone, says the Spanish proverb, is a fool. 
The future will not be as the past. N'o more 
pointing at ships and saying, " See ! ours are the 
best, the only well-ballasted ships in the harbor." 
Eeeve in the sails, call your crews aboard, spread 
the canvas of every activity, and sail out upon 
the broad ocean of opportunity which stretches 
away beyond all voyaging of human thought, car- 
rying such blessings to every part that gratitude 
shall belt the world with your praise. The future 
will do more than repeat the past. Orthodoxy, 
strong as white-oak and pliant as mountain-ash, 
shall be so interpreted as to be understood, and 
therefore loved, by the masses. Into the fibrous 
and plaited base of her wreath, woven from her 
doctrines, leaves many-colored, and flowers not a 
few nor lacking fragrance, shall be placed, and her 
garland shall be worthy the forehead of that sys- 
tem of salvation which has for its parents both the 
justice and the love of God. No longer dogmatic. 



TO YOUNG MEN. 87 

no longer uncouth, tolerant hereafter toward every- 
thing but sin, no longer repellant, she shall adorn 
herself with the choicest culture, attracting the 
multitudes by her honesty on the one hand and 
the grace of her appearance on the other. No 
longer behind the age, filled with the spirit of 
progress, she shall light the race down the ages 
with the two orbs of her faith both luminous and 
at full glow, — love toward God and equal love 
toward all men. And the realization of that high 
hope to the Orthodox Church, founded in this 
country, through the agency of our fathers, by God 
Himself, is to come, more than from any other 
source, through the action of the young men to- 
day in the church. 

As a further reason to warrant solicitude for 
young men, we might mention the intimate rela- 
tion they must sustain to the future character and 
opportunities of the Church. 

It is evident that the Church has reached that 
point at which her grandest and final triumphs are 
to be won. She stands upon the threshold of a 
future ablaze with the illuminations of victory. 
Upon the generation now coming into power God 
imposes such obligations as no preceding one was 
ever honored wdth. I say honored with, for the 
responsibilities which are of God spring from en- 
larged possibilities of usefulness. The character 
of that piety and virtue exhibited by the young 



88 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

men of the Church for the next thirty years will 
largely decide what its piety shall be for the next 
three hundred years. God has given it to our 
hands to sketch the outline of that typical Godli- 
ness into which the world is to grow as into the 
very stature of Christ. I pray you, young men, 
let that piety in you which is to type the piety of 
the future be measured by the utmost demand of 
Gospel requirement. Feel as though in your lives 
day by day you were laying the foundations of 
that temple the cap-stone of which centuries hence 
the happy, because redeemed, nations shall come 
together and lay with shoutings. Live so that 
from that remote age he who is chosen to express 
the thought of the multitude will point his finger 
to your graves and say, " The men and women 
who sleep there began what w^e to-day finish, and 
gave, through their lives, the first perfect expres- 
sion of that piety which at last, as our eyes be- 
hold, has made the whole earth one." 

To this end, gauge the opposition, that you may 
be stimulated to the requisite effort. Eemember 
that your feet stand amid snares and on the edge 
of pitfalls. Remember that low piety in you 
means low piety wherever your example and 
influence extends. Your fall is not disastrous to 
you alone. It is equally, perhaps more fatal, to 
all whom your fall discourages and drags down 
with you. No life to-day is sirigle or isolated. 



TO YOUNG MEN. 89 

Life is manifold and complex. It is intermingled, 
woven in and woven out, with other lives. As 
a transverse thread in the woof brings, by its irrup- 
tion or fracture, looseness and severance to the 
entire piece, so the lapse of any man from virtue 
entails weakness and loss to the entire social and 
moral structure of which he is a part. Be stead- 
fast, therefore, and watch unto prayer. 

The Apostle writes unto young men, because, 
as he says, they are strong. But when is a young 
man strong ? Is he strong when he is held and 
shaken like a very reed in the clutch of some base 
appetite ? Is he strong when he is scourged and 
driven at the hand of some lust like a slave, and 
like a slave submits without shame or resistance ? 
Is he strong when a low-bred sneer, a stinging 
taunt, or a silly banter can sheer him from a noble 
purpose ? Is he strong when the breath of a wo- 
man expressed in an invitation to taste the wine- 
cup can blow his resolution and pledge into the air, 
and whirl them, as the wind whirls a feather, out 
of sight and thought ? Is he strong when he is 
too cowardly to stand by his convictions of loyalty 
to Christ and virtue ? No, a thousand times no ! 
such a young man is not strong. If there is any 
such young man here to-niglit, within the sound 
of my voice, high or low, rich or poor, let this 
judgment come to you. I cast it at your con- 
science as men shoot flaming arrows into caverns 



90 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

to light up their horrible darkness. Yon are 
weak, — weak as a cord of flax in the blaze of a 
candle, or as last year's reeds on the banks of a 
river. John did not write to such as you. He 
wrote to young men who were strong, evidenced 
by the fact that they had " overcome the AVicked 
One." 

!N'ow that is a wonderful statement. And yet 
it is true in the case of every young man who has 
broken away from Satan and joined himself to 
Christ. Such a person has won a great victory. 
He never will know how great it is until from 
heaven, with holy and instructed vision, he con- 
templates the doings of Him who " spoiled princi- 
palities and powers, making a boast of them open- 
ly." To overcome Satan is to get the mastery 
over one who shook the thrones of heaven with jar- 
ring strife, and into this earth brought, even when 
weakened by defeat, sin and death. Marvellous 
conflict ! transcendent triumph ! a struggle which 
sets us forever free, and closes an unaccountable 
rebellion with an unending peace ! 

But this victory won by man is not of man. 
God nerves the arm that deals the blow, else pow- 
erless. The dead come forth, but only at the 
quickening word of Christ. This is a great mys- 
tery, — how man is free and God supreme, how 
we can strike and He do all the cutting. But 
what is hidden will by and by be plain. The fog 



TO YOUNG MEN. 91 

will lift, and we shall see what current drifts our 
boat. Young birds are always dim of sight until 
their wings are plumed for upper air. 

But though overcome, still the " wicked one " 
does not give up the contest, else a Christian's life 
would be fruition and not warfare, and we should 
all sit on thrones and not be running in the dust 
and heat of the race-course. The principle of 
evil has a sort of ugly immortality. In it lurks 
a subtle and deathless element. Diabolism is 
abused divinity. So it comes about that the 
Christian is always winning, yet always fighting. 
He conquers, and is always attacked ; victorious, 
yet never at peace. 

Now, young men, I take it that this is the case 
with us. We did once, each of us, with the Spir- 
it's aid, wrestle so stoutly as to overcome the ad- 
versary. Yea, we got him down and had our knee 
on his breast and our grip on his throat, and we 
bore so hard on him that he lay powerless, and we 
thought that the life had gone out of him, and 
that we should be no more troubled by him for- 
ever. But scarcely had we risen and turned to go 
our way, when lo ! our adversary stood before us 
as desperate, if not as strong, as ever. And so it 
is in the experience of all. A man can barely rise 
in the morning before he is set upon and must 
lock in for a close hug with his stout-backed foe. 
And many a bruise and painful fall have we all 



92 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. • 

gotten in these rongli encounters. And it be- 
hooves us all to make ourselves expert in the 
modes of spiritual attack and defence, to " prove 
every spirit/' and be as wise as wrestlers, who 
study how to trip and recover and cast in their 
brave frolics. 

Now, one thing that all young men need, and 
which Grod expects you to exhibit in this warfare, 
is high, undaunted resolution, — or, to put it in 
Saxon, grit. 

To live uprightly and purely in this age is no 
play. A young man who resolves to do it must 
put himself, as a fencer does when about to be at- 
tacked, on his guard. He needs an eye like a 
swallow's, and a wrist pliant and well nerved, to 
parry the thrusts and ward off the passes of his 
foe. A mild and dove-like disposition does not 
hold a man up to the line of duty at all times. 
There are the mild, and there are also the heroic 
virtues of Christianity, and both find their proper 
moments of expression. There are times when a 
young man must say no, and bring it out like 
the snap of a frosty file. There are times -also 
when he must say yes, and make it ring like the 
blast of a trumpet. Never did young men need 
this quality and temper more than they do to-day ; 
never were there more opportunities for its exercise. 
Old issues are passing away, new ones are rising 
into view. In politics everything is chaotic, and a 



TO YOUNG MEN. 93 

Christian must pick his way by the exercise of his 
own conscience and judgment. God has given to 
this generation the rare j)rivilege of changing its 
course without mortiiication, and its suffrage with- 
out inconsistency. He has made the line between 
right and wrong, between temperance and drunk- 
enness, broader and clearer than ever before in the 
history of the world. No eye can fail to see it ; 
and no confusing of issues, no partisan jugglery, 
no evasion of duty, can ever wipe it out. At your 
feet it is drawn, and there it will continue inefface- 
able and well defined, until your position at the 
last assize shall be decided by your relation to it. 

In social life the same is true. In parlors, and 
saloons, and on festive occasions, you will more 
than once be challenged by the tempter, and must 
needs bear witness for temperance and piety. At 
such supreme moments I entreat you not to flinch. 
Avoid rudeness, but never surrender principle. 
Never be so deceived by the sweetness of the 
draught as to swallow poison. Harmonize with 
no fashionable folly. Be not moved by sneers, 
nor swayed by banter, nor captured by entreaty. 
Be true to your highest conceptions of right, to 
those views of duty given in the Bible to man, and 
to those aspirations for holiness which come to 
you in moments of supreme moral elevation. 

To conclude, I would say, — and I would say 
it personally to each one of you, — if you have 



94 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

ever yielded to temptation, ever stifled conviction, 
ever acted counter to your sense of right, ever 
been influenced by ridicule, ever joined in with 
less scrupulous companions, you did a weak, a wick- 
ed, and a silly thing. Never, so long as you draw 
breath, so misdemean yourself again. Live, hence- 
forth, so near the Deity, by faith in Christ and 
along the line of correct conduct, that, in the 
hour of your supremest trial, you shall not only 
be justified, but also glorified, in the presence of 
God and those most holy angels of His, among 
whom as with fellow-servants you shall thence- 
forth live and love and adore forever. 



BURDEN-BEARING. 95 



SEEM OK V. 

BURDEN-BEARING. 

"For every man shall bear his own burden." — Galatians 
vi. 5. 

IF you look at the second verse of this chapter, 
you will find these words, " Bear ye one an- 
other's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," 
while our text asserts that every man shall bear 
his own burden. These two passages, standing in 
such juxtaposition and apparently contradictory, 
were once inexplicable to me. I found in one a 
command to bear another man's burden, and then, 
immediately following it, the assertion that every 
man should bear his own. How I could bear a 
person's burden if he was compelled to bear it 
himself, I could not understand. But that experi- 
ence which years and trials bring to us all has 
interpreted these two passages correctly to me, and 
harmonized what formerly was discordant. I see 
now how it comes about that all of you can aid 
me in bearing my burden, and yet how, in spite of 
all your well-meant and needed assistance, I must 
bear my own burden. 

I have not the time to amplify both of these 
passages, and thereby show you just where they 



96 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

connect, — just where the two statements blend 
into one, and give full expression to one and the 
same truth. But this, in passing, I will say, that 
there are some truths which you cannot express in 
a sentence : you cannot condense them into a pas- 
sage ; you cannot bring their legitimate pressure 
to bear upon the conscience in a single injunction. 

When God, therefore, wishes to express any 
great truth, — which is but another way of saying 
when he wishes to express Himself, — He is com- 
pelled, as it were, to put it in more than one form 
of words. Truth is spherical, truth is cone-like, 
and the mind must encompass it in order to under- 
stand it. Thus it is with the Scriptures. In one 
passage God gives us one view of a truth, further 
on another, and yet further a third ; and so, by pre- 
senting it to us from many points of view, calling 
our attention to this and that side of it. He makes 
us at last understand it in its full force and com- 
pleteness. 

Moreover, He uses our experience to advance 
our understanding. One day reveals what the day 
before was hidden. There are many things in 
God's government over us which we did not com- 
prehend once, but which we do comprehend now. 
There are questions in ethics, there are prob- 
lems of body and mind, which were once mys- 
terious, but which are now plain. From the tan- 
gled skein of our ignorance and misgiving each 



BURDEN-BE ARIXG. 97 

day's experience has unravelled some strand. With 
some of you the process is nearly completed, and 
the mass nearly threaded out. 

Now in these two passages the main topic, the 
central shaft, is burden-bearing. This is the truth 
which, like a column Aviitten all over with hiero- 
glyphs, we are to study. " Bear ye one another's 
burdens." That is one side of it. That teaches 
us the duty of sympathy, of tenderness, of mutual 
helpfulness. But come round to the side of our 
text, "For every man shall bear his own burden," 
and you see the other side, and the letters spell a 
different injunction. 

Now I wish to show you, this evening, what 
burdens every man must bear for himseK, and why 
and in what manner he is strensfthened to bear 
them. 

This, then, is my first proposition, namely, that 
every one must bear the burden of his own sins, 
both as concerns this life and the next. 

The results of sin are strictly individual. It is 
with the soul as with the body, with the spirit as 
with the flesh. If you thrust a knife into your arm, 
it does not affect me. You yourself feel the pain ; 
you yourself must endure the agony. I may sym- 
pathize, I may pity, I may bandage the gash, but 
the severed flesh and the lacerated fibres are yours, 
and along your nerves nature telegra23hs the pain. 
So it is with the soul. A man who stabs himself 
5 o 



98 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

with a bad habit, who opens the arteries of his 
higher life with the lancet of his passions and 
drains them of the vital fluid, who inserts his 
head within the noose of appetite and swings him- 
self off from the pedestal of his self-control, must 
endure the suffering, the weakness, and the loss 
which are the issue of his insane conduct. 

IsTow there is nothing which grips one so 
tightly, nothing which coils itself around one 
with so deadly a compression, as remorse. When 
this feeling gets the fingers of its agony upon 
a man's throat, death itself is a release and a 
happy deliverance. I do not suppose that any of 
you can gauge the pressure of this sensation. It is 
the law of our nature that we cannot realize what 
we have not felt. Pain is its own interpreter. 
There is but one oracle through which agony can 
express its thoughts : that oracle is itself. To 
know what remorse is, you must have felt re- 
morse. Th^ scarred and blasted tree reveals the 
hot and witherin<T violence of the liofhtnino-, and so 
the scathed and shattered soul manifests the ruin 
of sin. I said T did not suppose that any of you 
could estimate the terrible character of this sensa- 
tion, for you have never felt it in 'its extreme bitter- 
ness. But many, perhaps all of us, have felt it in 
part. Eecall each of you, then, that period of your 
life the memory of which is most painful ; that 
lapse, that deed, that connivance with evil, that 



BURDEN-BEARING. 99 

evasion of duty, that hour of evil pressure and of 
evil inclination, which most hurt you and others. 
Bring back and place clearly before you that dire 
experience. Unbar the gates of your secrecy, 
and utter to your own mind and heart that long- 
repressed confession. What humiliation there is in 
that recollection ! What a frightful appearance that 
lapse has in memory ! How it gibbers and shakes 
its finger at you, as if it had escaped the bondage 
of its cowardly reticence, and become a part of 
the world's free and scornful knowledge ! I do 
not sit in judgment on your conduct. I pro- 
nounce no verdict. This is not an arraignment, 
but an illustration. I only ask you to allow .the 
remembrance of that day, that hour, that deed, 
to assist your imagination to realize what that 
remorse must be which follows upon greater lapses 
and darker crimes. I do not w^onder that men 
redden daggers with their own blood, when, look- 
ing through the brazen gatew^ay of such a recol- 
lection, I behold the lurid fires and glowdng pave- 
ment wiiich overhang^ and illuminate with dire- 
ful light tlie path beyond. I w^onder most at the 
endurance of the human will, which, with agony 
here, and no hope in the hereafter, bears up under 
the pressure of its self-incurred curse. Where 
can a man with this remorse in his bosom flee ? 
Can he escape his own heart ? Can he triumph 
over his owm thought ? Can he sweep away the 



100 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

impending terror of his own forebodings ? If he 
should take the wings of the morning, and fly to 
the uttermost parts of the earth, what would that 
avail ? If he should mount into heaven, if he 
should swoop to the nethermost recess of hell, 
neither the light of the firmament, nor the depth 
of the bottomless pit itself, could provide him 
refuge from the terror of his own consciousness. 
My hearers, a man with this remorse of sin in his 
heart is the movable centre of a contracting cir- 
cumference. The fire of his torment girdles him 
about, and over its blazing border he can never 
leap. Wherever he moves, it moves with him. 
The evil which kindled feeds it, and the fire of 
his suffering will never be quenched. ]N"ow, who 
can deliver him from his punishment ? Can you 
or I ? Is there a man or woman here 'equal to this 
task ? It may be a brother, but can you feel that 
brother's remorse ? It may be a loved one : can you 
bear the agony of her self-conviction ? 'No. That 
soul stands alone, like an oak on the plain when 
the bolt hangs suspended and about to be launched 
above it. The fire will come down, and every leaf 
shall be withered. The very trunk shall be rived, 
and upon it shall fall the concentrated violence of 
the storm. So upon that soul shall the judgment 
of Heaven descend, and it must bear the burden 
of the Almighty's wrath. The lesson I wish to 
teach is the individual responsibility of your 



BURDEN-BEARING. 101 

acts before God. In morals there is no copart- 
nership, no ipro rata division of profit and loss. 
Each man receives according to the summation of 
his own account. By as much as any of you have 
done wTong, for that wrong you yourself are re- 
sponsible. If you have sown to the wind, upon 
you alone will fall the pressure of the whirlwind. 
If your virtue is weak, if your will is irresolute, 
if your appetites are strong, the battle is your 
own, and by you must the battle be fought out- 
If you have wronged anybody, if you have slighted 
anybody, if you have betrayed anybody, if you 
have tempted or ruined anybody, — the sin stands 
ghastly and ominous at your own door. Others 
may have done as ill, others may have done worse, 
but their e^dl or their well doino- is no defence 
for you. Each soul is a unit, and virtue is abso- 
lute. The oak cannot borrow a leaf from the 
maple, the fruitful cannot lend to a barren tree. 
The solemnity of this thought is beyond expres- 
sion. "When our souls shall stand naked before 
God, the heavens will concentrate upon us their 
attention. Every heart that is condemned shall 
be condemned by itself. The sins that we have 
nursed will give their testimony against us, and 
wickedness will acquiesce in the justice of its 
own condemnation. In view of that final arbit- 
rament, I ask you all to look within your own 
hearts, and ascertain definitely what your con- 



102 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

dition is. Learn to-niglit what breezes waft your 
ship, what pilot holds the helm, and whither you 
are bound. 

Enlist imagination in this service. Separate your- 
self from all your kind, make of the world a soli- 
tude, depopulate the globe, and think of yourseK 
as the only living soul upon which the attention 
of Heaven and Hell is fixed to-night. With all 
these innumerable eyes fastened upon you, bearing 
the inquisition of the universe, with the scrutiny 
of the All-seeinoj HimseK directed like a sinoie 
beam of light upon your soul, tell me, what is 
your condition and your hope ? Are you prepared 
for the hereafter ? If to-night its massive gates 
should open, and the dark-faced usher summon you 
to appear, could you pass beneath its gloomy portal 
fearlessly and at peace ? Are you ready to go, sin- 
covered as you are, and take your stand before the 
great white throne ? Would your heart fail and your 
limbs falter in that hour of supreme emergency ? 
Here and now I say to you, wishing to suggest no 
fear to supply you with a motive to act, that, if 
this subject has not been canvassed, — if this great 
problem, — the greatest that ever engaged human 
thought, the problem which includes all other prob- 
lems in it as the whole includes the parts, — if this 
has not been solved, you are living neither in ac- 
cordance with the injunction of revelation nor the 
dictates of common prudence. That man or woman. 



BURDEN-BEARING. 1 03 

I care not of what faith, of what profession, of 
what mode of thought, who does not take the last 
element of risk out of the future, acts against the 
promptings of ordinary caution. The man who 
does not analyze the possibilities of tlie future 
down to the last drop, in order to extract there- 
from some well-ascertained hope, is a marvel of 
lethargy and indiscretion. As beings able to think, 
challenged to thought by as supreme a motive as 
ever quickened intellect, I exhort you to sink the 
plummet of your investigation into the depth of 
this question to-night. Touch bottom somewhere, 
lieach some kind of a conclusion ; and let this 
stand as a white day in the calendar of your time, 
because, between the rising and going down of the 
sun thereof, you ascertained, for the first time in 
your life, your moral condition, and fixed by an 
unalterable decision the character of your future 
destiny. 

I have alluded to the individuality of moral re- 
sponsibility. I have striven to show you that 
each one must endure his own sufferings, and 
abide the result of his own actions, and that in 
this no one can share with him. Not only is this 
true in respect to moral responsibility, but it is 
equally true in respect to moral gro^vth. 

You may place two trees side by side, so that 
their branches shall interlace, and the fragrance of 
their blossoms intermingle, and yet in their growth 



104 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

each is separate. Covered by the sarae soil, mois- 
tened by the same drop, warmed by the same ray, 
the roots of either collect and reinforce the trunks 
of each, with their respective nourishment. Each 
tree grows by a law of its own growth, and the 
law of its own effort. The sap of one in its 
upward or downward flow cannot desert its own 
channels and feed the fibres of the other. So it is 
with two Christians. Planted in the same soil, 
drawing their sustenance from the same source, 
they, nevertheless, extract it through individual 
processes of thought and life. In daily contact and 
communion, wliether in floral or fruitful states 
intermingling, equal in girth and height, equal in 
the results of their growth, the spiritualized cur- 
rents of the one mind cannot become the property 
of the other. They cannot exchange duties. They 
cannot exchange hopes. They cannot exchange 
rewards, and, when lifted by Divine transplanting 
into another soil and clime, the law which gov- 
erned, which divided, which individualized them 
here, will govern, divide, and individualize them 
there. No matter how close may be the commun- 
ion between my soul and other souls ; no matter 
how intimate and sympathetic may be my rela- 
tion to you and yours, to me, still it remains true 
that whatever growth I have is my own growth ; 
the hope which cheers me, is my own hope; the 
reward which awaits me, if reward shall be mine, 



BURDEN-BEARING. 105 

will be eternally my own reward. It is also true 
that in struggle, in peril, in temptation, in bat- 
tle, assist as you may, petition as you may, ex- 
hort as you may, the ultimate act, the critical 
decision, is of my own will. 

Against the future, represented by your weak- 
ness and indwelling sin, set your face, then, 
Christian, with a grim and intensely personal sen- 
timent of determination. Cover yourself with 
your own self-sustained and self-advanced shield. 
"When set upon by anything hostile, seek the 
shelter of no one's back, but look steadfastly 
into the eyes and strike boldly out at the person 
of your foe. I find nothing in Scripture which 
warrants me to seek alliance with others, in order 
to escape the necessity of utmost personal endeavor. 
Seeking only to know that you are covered with 
the whole armor of God, go into battle single- 
handed and alone. AAHiatever cup God commends 
to your lips, whether bitter or sweet, drink it, look- 
ing to no one for encouragement. Draw your in- 
spiration from your own convictions of duty. Live 
seK-collected ; live within yourself. Then, when 
the roar of the battle dies out in your ears, and 
your spirit stands poised expectant, ready to mount 
above the tumult forever, you will be able to say, 
leaving it to swell the mighty memories of moral 
triumph, " I have fought the good fight, I have 
finished the course." 



106 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

This does not seem to be the prevailing view of 
Christians living in the churches to-day. Undue 
importance, as it appears to me, is attached to 
the connection of Christians one with another, and 
to the good or bad effect such connection has upon 
individual growth. Men seek and depend upon 
alliance with others, as if in that alliance they 
could find security from evil, and support other 
than that which comes through personal watch- 
fulness and effort. They act as if a failure to re- 
ceive such assistance as they deem proper released 
them from obligation, or at least furnished a pallia- 
tion of their own failure. Young or weakly Chris- 
tians are apt to fall into this error. They are 
prone to attribute their slow development or non- 
development to the lethargy of the church, or to 
their failure to receive such cordial assistance as 
the covenant suggests and they have reason to 
expect. I do not say that there is not a certain 
modicum of truth in this complaint, which, in one 
way or another, so often comes to a pastor's eaxs. 
It is undoubtedly true;, that the covenant is not 
lived up to in this respect. Multitudes who con- 
nect themselves with the churches do not receive 
that fellowship and love which our covenants and 
the professed object of church organization lead 
one to anticipate ; and it behooves us to give due 
heed to this complaint, and so act as to make it 
impossible. But when you have granted the ut- 



BURDEN-BEARING. 107 

most that one can rightfully claim in this respect, 
when you have acknowledged all that you justly 
can concerning it, still you will find that the 
complaint is often based upon a misapprehension 
of spu'itual relations and the causes of spiritual 
growth. This cannot be too deeply impressed on 
a convert's mind, that in his own natural powers, 
directed and sanctified by the Spirit, he is to find 
the source of all his usefulness, his safety, and his 
growth. Those processes of thought through which 
the Christian's mind passes upward in understand- 
ing of God and apprehension of duty are strictly 
and absolutely individual. I cannot think for you, 
or you for me. We cannot ponder, we cannot 
meditate, for one another. Soul food, like body 
food, is assimilated by each man for himself. 
You might as well insist that I could feed you by 
what I take into my own system, as that the pabu- 
lum which my mental activity secures for my own 
growth can minister to you nourishment. Material 
wealth can be transferred, property can be willed to 
you, and you can be enriched by the result of an- 
other's toil ; but no one can transfer his thought- 
power to another. You cannot transmit mental ca- 
pacity on parchment. You cannot reward idleness 
with the fruit of consecrated endeavor. In all these 
respects religion is intensely personal. Whether 
you rear a hovel or a palace, it must stand on 
foundations your own hands have hewn and laid, 



108 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and the mortar which cements the structure must 
be moistened by the sweat of your own industry. 
I wish every young Christian here to-night, yea, 
and every old one too, would bring this truth 
home upon his consciousness, that in this respect 
he cannot divide responsibility with another. His 
church may be lethargic, his pastor may be re- 
miss, he may receive rebuff where he expected 
sympathy, and fellowship be only in name, and 
yet he is held to the same accountability, he 
must be judged by the same standard of duty and 
growth. Our graces may be as lifeless as the leaves 
of a blasted tree, and yet he is to be perpetually 
green. We may fall together, or one by one ; yet 
over the ruins of our prostrated hopes the turrets 
of his citadel are to rise. 

The great end of all teaching to-day should be 
to make the membership of our churches individ- 
ually strong. In the realization of that result lies 
the hope of the future. The generations to come 
are to be generations subject to great tempta- 
tions. Like an orchard of young trees planted on 
the northern slope of a mountain, our children 
will grow up in a morally hazardous exposure. A 
nation of cities, where masses of men are crowded 
together, — where wealth begets injurious luxury, 
and poverty leads to crime, — where travel is a pop- 
ular custom and a popular necessity, — where noth- 
ing is permanent, nothing is settled, — is a country 



BURDEN-BEARING. 109 

where virtue must be strictly individual, if it is to 
' survive at all. We must remember that much which 
contributed to the assistance of morality in our 
fathers' day is no longer with us. The home in- 
fluence, for instance, — the most potent and benefi- 
cent sentiment, — will never again be felt as we 
have felt it. Cities, railroads, and emigration make 
home impossible. Your children will not derive 
their gravity, virtues, and health from such sources 
as were open to you. Between the young man of 
1840 and 1870 is a vast gulf of change, — let us 
hope, of progress. The tide ahead runs with whirl- 
ing swiftness, and the air is full of drifting spray 
and patches of froth. Those who sail the future 
must beat their way up in the teeth of the tem- 
pest. Men and women that stand erect under 
* such pressure as awaits the next generation will 
stand because of some other reason than that 
they are church-members, or because they are re- 
strained by the fear of public opinion. God alone 
knows what public opinion will be forty years 
from this. Such as stand will stand because thev 
are strong in themselves. They will stand, as the 
granite pillar stands, because it is weighty and 
ponderous, and set upon a well-secured pedestal. 
I have no faith in a virtue strong only in crutches 
and props, which topples over the instant friendly 
outside support is withdrawn. The soul that is 
virtuous only becaue of the absence of temptation 



110 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

is not virtuous at all ; but the soul that looks 
enticement steadily in the eye, and frowns it down, 
until it slinks away abashed, which has the offer 
but refuses the bribe, — to that soul the struggle 
and the triumph is divinely strong. His virtue is 
not an accident. It is the result of that heroic 
self-control which follows the impartment of the 
Spirit. 

Who of you here to-night are thus strong ? 
"Whose piety is of that broad-chested sort which 
has sufficient lung-room for the healthy inspira- 
tion of the whole system ? Whose practice in spir- 
itual gymnastics is so well sustained as to keep 
every joint supple, every tendon flexile, and every 
artery in healthy beat ? N"othing stirs the spirit 
of admiration and reverence in me more than to 
see a young ruan of twenty lower himself down to 
the weightSj clasp the handles, and lift six hun- 
dred pounds. How the creative skill and benevo- 
lence of God are brought out by such an exhibition 
of physical power ! When you see a little man 
of one-hundred-and-fifty-pound weight elevate a 
mass of iron and lead, every bone perpendicularly 
adjusted in its socket, every muscle ridging out, 
every little vein flushing with rose-tints the clear, 
transparent skin, you realize the statement of 
Holy Writ, that man is wonderfully and fearfully 
made. 

But, friends, there is a soul-power more wonder- 



BURDEN-BEARING. Ill 

ful, more majestic, more divine, than all physical 
power. There is a nobler sight than a well- 
tended, well-developed body. It is the spectacle 
of a well-tended, well-developed spirit. And 
there is no exhibition so beautiful or so magnetic 
in its influence under heaven, as that which a soul 
presents when it lowers itself to the weight of 
some adversity, some dead, inert mass of selfish- 
ness, and lifts it ; and, ^yiih a pressure on it suffi- 
cient to crush a weakly one, and cause it to cry 
out in 'pain, stands erect, evenly poised, firmly 
planted, Godlike. I know^ some men and women 
who have lived in the grip of a vice-like pressure 
for twenty years, and not a sound has escaped their 
lips, not a look revealed to any the burden they 
were staggering under. I know men unto whom 
temptation to cheat and lie, and put a price in 
money or sensual pleasure upon their virtue, has 
come up in confidence, and, like a braggart, chal- 
lenged them to the test ; and they have accepted 
the challenge, and without running behind some 
other man's back, or the back of the church, or 
any other protection, have stripped for a fair fight, 
and locked in with it ; and, assisted of God, who 
never deserted a man yet with such a spirit in him, 
have thrown it and dashed the life out of it. Such 
-Christians never have to fight many battles. Like 
Christ Himself, they have their hour in the portico 
of the Temple, and their struggle on the moun- 



112 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

tain's crest, and perchance a night of agony in 
some Gethsemane ; but their life, on the whole, is 
calm, and confident, and full of surpassing peace. 

Now I hold such a self-reliant spirit up to-night 
as an example for you, — especially for you who are 
young, and you, too, who are weak and tempted. 
Here is where the heroism of Christian living 
comes in. Here is w^here the triumph and the 
victory appear. That man who cannot control his 
passions when in full career, who cannot curb his 
temper and rein in his appetites, who cannot send 
the cloud back into the heavens and scatter it in 
golden mist, has never felt the first thrill of king- 
ship. 

I wish you all to feel — I wish to feel myself — 
our personal responsibility in this matter. If any 
of you have been doing wrong, you must break 
off, and break off, too, by an act of your own will. 
Upon you God puts to-night the burden of de- 
cision. I may sympathize, I may warn, I may 
entreat, but I cannot decide for you. that I 
could ! How quickly, then, would I heave you, by 
a noble resolution, up to the level of your duty ! 
How quickly would I lift you from the maze of 
doubt and longing and hesitation, and plant your 
feet on the firm ground of consecrated endeavor ! 
But, alas ! I cannot. I see you beating about in 
the fog, and I can only stand afar off, on the shore, 
at the mouth of the harbor, and shout to you the 



BURDEN-BEAEING. 113 

direction : " Ho, men and women 1 Ho, brothers ; 
this way, this way ! Steer for the light that 
streams from the Cross ! " Ah me ! ah me ! the 
winds and waves beat back my voice, and you, all 
heedless of peril, are being buffeted and driven 
hither and thither while the precious moments 
are passing. 

See what determination the world manifests 
in pursuit of carnal things ; over what sharp 
obstacles men mount to honor and wealth. A 
worldly man asks no help from anotlier. He 
plays the game of life boldly, asking no odds. 
When he comes to an obstruction, he puts his 
shoulder bravely against it, and rolls it aside or 
climbs over it. i^ay, more, out of the A^ery frag- 
ments of previous overthrow he erects a triumph. 
JSTothing overawes him nor discourages him. He 
asks no one to bear his burden. He bears it him- 
self, and finds it to be a source of strength and 
power. And shall a Christian shrink from what 
a worldling bravely attempts ? Shall we unto 
whom the heavens minister faint, when those to 
whom the gates of power are shut persevere ? 
My brethren, these things ought not so to be. 
What is a slip ? What is a scar ? What is a fall ? 
They will all testify to the perils you endured and 
the heroism of your perseverance, at the Last 
Day. Think not of these. Write on your ban- 
ner, where, living or dying, your eyes sliall behold 



114 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

them, these words : " He who endureth unto the 
end shall he saved!' 

But, friends, who made it possible for ns to bear 
our burdens ? Who taught us by the wisdom of 
His lips ? Who, by the example of His life and 
death ? It was Jesus. He bore His burden when 
He cried in the Garden, '' If it be possible, let this 
cup pass from Me." ~Eo, neither the sympathy of 
Heaven nor the power of God delivered Him. He 
accepted the destiny of His condition ; He set His 
lips to the bitter cup, and drained it to the very 
dregs. But how came He, the Innocent One, the 
Holy One, to have any burden ? Had He com- 
mitted sin that He must groan under the judg- 
ment ? No ; His nature was as white as a lily 
when it floats on a darkened tide. The Law of 
God had no claim against Him. He had not 
trangressed, He had not violated, the least in- 
junction of the Almighty. He had wronged no 
one ; He had slighted no one ; He had neglected no 
one. How came He, then, to have a burden ? and 
whose burden was it that He bore ? My hearer, 
it was your burden and mine that He bore. 
Heaven had claims against us, and He out of love 
and compassion undertook to satisfy those claims. 
He did satisfy them. It was decreed that He must 
leave Heaven for a time, and He left it. It was 
decreed that He must take the lot and condi- 
tion of a mortal, and He took them. It was de- 



BURDEN-BEARING. 115 

creed that He must die, and tlie blood of His most 
precious life was freely shed on Calvary. All this 
"was done for us. I mean every one of you, — for 
you who accept and for you who reject Him. He 
was the only man who ever died for his enemies. 
And now, with all that Christ did for you to point 
and wing it, I launch this query straight home to 
your hearts, What have you done for Him ? Have 
you loved Him ? Have you served Him ? Have 
you ever even gone and done so much as to ex- 
press a word of gratitude to Him ? Do you feel 
any gratitude ? Why, a dog is thankful for the 
bread you give him, and, faithful unto death to his 
benefactor, he w^ill lie down in the mountains by 
your side and die. And yet there are some of you 
unto whom that dog might well be taken as a 
teacher and an example. The wind will soon come 
up from the south balmy and warm, bearing in its 
breath suggestions of the orange and the rose, and 
eveVy root and fibre will thrill in welcome, and the 
dry twigs swell and prepare to unfurl their green 
banners, and the buds, unable to restrain them- 
selves longer," will burst into beauty and fragrance. 
Shall ISTature thus hasten to express her gratitude 
to God as the sun comes journeying up from the 
tropics, and shall we, over whom that love is ever 
at its meridian, raying down its invitation upon us, 
quickening us with sweet enticements of growth, 
remain silent, unmoved, and thankless ? O that 



116 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

this coming week might prove a spiritual spring- 
time to your souls ! May we be quickened in our 
graces, and all the dead things in us start into new 
life, and our hearts, warmed into energy, know a 
great blossoming of hope and holy impulse, — fore- 
runners of great spiritual fruitage ! 

But, before I close, a word of cheer, a word of 
hope and consolation. 

My friends, it is true I know little of your lives, 
little of your trials, little of the burdens under 
which with varying strength you have walked thus 
far. But life has a stern discipline for all, and as 
I look into your faces, you seem to me as if each 
of you was carrying some weight. What struggle, 
I say to myself, what effort, what manifold phases 
of experience, what sighs and groans and agonies 
unexpressed, such a vast audience as this must 
represent ! What lines of recollection, radiating 
from this hall, run backward to other days and 
scenes ! What memories, starting from the past, 
throng in upon us here, and hover like a vast cloud 
of invisible witnesses over us, until every man be- 
holds the record of his life, written as at the Judg- 
ment, in living light above his head. And I think 
of that future which awaits us, of the days yet to 
be ours, moving in silent and measured procession 
out of eternity, and of that day of days, which 
shall be the last, and close the calendar of our toil 
forever. Live so as to think of that day with 



B URDEN- BEARING. 117 

joy. It is not for me to speculate as to what death 
will bring us. I imagine that it will bring us far 
more than most of us think. At least this much we 
know, it will bring to the weary and the heavy- 
laden rest, and to such as missed the fulfilment 
here a renewal of all their hopes. You will meet 
with those who journeyed on, being called first, be- 
fore you, — the brave, the gentle, and the good ; and 
all that to-night is sweet in hope or dear in ex- 
pectation, if it be pure and cherished purely, will 
come and put its arms around you, and you will 
have it with you as yours eternally. And unto 
all this and much beside, yea, unto this vast 
temple of life and love, with its magnificent en- 
tablatures and majestic spaces, you who enter will 
enter through one door, Christ Jesus, our Lord and 
our Eedeemer. For unto the city, in which it is 
builded, with its many gates, each gate a solid 
pearl, none can climb by any other way. For He 
is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 



118 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMOK YI. 

NEAENESS OE GOD. 
*' Thou art near, O Lord." — Psalm cxix. 151. 

THE basis of this declaration is the greatness 
and goodness of God. It is an ejaculation 
founded on the conviction that in God exist such 
powers of observation and such faculties that 
nothing escapes his notice, nothing is beyond his 
control. 

Nature accepts this declaration of faith. She 
willingly testifies to the presence of a First Cause. 
In her every form and order of life you find the 
suggestion of Creative Power. Matter is dead, 
inert. In it of itself is no faculty of action. It 
must be acted upon, it must be vitalized, before 
the spirit of combination, the impulse of life, 
enters into it. To this formula, this creed, every 
living substance assents. 

The human mind receives the same idea readily. 
The imagination uses this conception in many 
lovely and reverential ways. The very senses of 
the body rejoice at the thought, and are spiritual- 
ized by it. In the operation of laws all around 
us, which could not of themselves have sprung 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 110 

into existence, and the ceaseless energy of which 
must have been derived from some outside pro- 
pulsion, the mind recognizes the omnipresence of 
the Creator. Inanimate substances in their dumb 
processes of growth and change confess to the same 
sentiment. The tree says, God is near me, for I 
am by nature senseless and powerless. I am but 
so much dead matter operated upon by forces un- 
caused by and unknown to me. In my substance, 
in root, trunk, or bough, is no power to occasion 
such a change as is coming over me. See, it says, 
— and every leaf and twig speaks, — see the trans- 
formation going on among my branches ! Behold 
the addition every hour makes to my appearance ! 
And thus the tree rejoices in God's nearness, and 
all nature re-echoes the same devout sentiment. 

It is of this Divine nearness to man I would 
speak to-night. It is not my purpose to construct 
an argument or make a labored analysis. It is 
not logical demonstration so much as suggestion 
that I have in view this evening. A sermon is 
not a boat which an audience can get into and 
sail off securely on a pleasant intellectual voyage 
of an hour. It is food to satisfy soul-hunger, to 
strengthen present weakness, to revive faintness, 
to soothe pain as it is now felt, and illuminate 
gathering darkness. At least I would that this 
should prove so. 

My hope is to make some of you realize more 



120 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

fully than you do now that God is near you, and 
near you in love, and will be all the days of your 
coming life. 

I would suggest, in the first place, that God is 
near us in the hour of human desertion. 

The Psalms of David are wonderful in the mani- 
fold expression they give to human feeling on the 
one hand, and the Divine nature on the other. 
Some of them are to God what lakes are to the 
surrounding and overhanging mountains, — a mir- 
ror in which we behold Him reflected. There is 
one passage found in the twenty-seventh Psalm, by 
which I have been more comforted, and in which 
I have seen a more lovely reflection of God, than 
in any one passage of the whole Bible. I refer to 
the verse where the writer is speaking of his faith 
in God's love. He says : " When my father and 
my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me 
up." "What a picture of God that is ! When my 
mother forsakes me ! How the mind pauses and 
shrinks at the suggestion ! My mother forsake 
me, I say to myself, mother forsake me ! Never ! 
What ! that mother who gave me birth, rejoicing 
in the pain which ushered me to life, who gave of 
her life to strengthen mine, and woke my infant 
mind to thought, who bore with all my wild, 
now often-repented disobedience, who toiled and 
watched for me, — that mother who sits far off' 
to-night with her Bible on her knees perhaps, her 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 121 

wrinkled and shrivelled hands resting on it, her 
head streaked with silvery hair, and her lips mov- 
ing both in thanksgiving and prayer for me now, — 
mother forsake me ! Never ! But, my friends, if 
it were possible ; if the sweet current of her endless 
love could flow back upon itself, and leave me pant- 
ing upon the sand ; if some great sin, some heavy 
and swift-smiting crime, smote me down and left 
me bruised and bleeding ; and father should come, 
and, seeing me, curse one who had dishonored liis 
name, and pass by ; and mother, pausing only a mo- 
ment to wring her hands and groan, pass on too ; 
— then the Lord, yea, God who sits in the heav- 
ens, who hates sin but loves the sinner infinitely, — 
God, coming after father and mother, would stoop 
and take me up. Yet this is the God that some 
of you will not love, some of you will not serve ; 
yea, this is the God of the Orthodox churches, 
whom some of you say we make a hard, unfeeling 
t\Tant, rejoicing in the punishment of men. 

Human desertion and loneliness of spirit, — who 
at one time or another has not passed through such 
seasons ? who has not shivered under its cloud, and 
come dripping and chilled out of the waters of its 
despair ? Even Christ was deserted, and bore the 
a-gony of the Garden and trial unassisted by friends. 
Loneliness is often the result of our own states 
and moods or circumstances. The mind makes its 
own solitude, its own despair, and repels human 

6 



122 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

approacli. Who admits the world to ' the secrecy 
of his thoughts ? Who permits the crowd to rush 
against and force the fastenings of his soul's reti- 
cence, and hear its whispered doubts and fears, its 
terrors and its self-accusations ? No one. The fool 
babbles, but the mouth of the capable is shut. 
Half our lives the world knows nothing of, and 
would not understand if they did know. Now and 
then one like unto ourselves is admitted into the 
circle of our inner life, and carries about with him 
the knowledge of our experience ; but it lies dow^n 
and sleeps in the grave when he sleeps. Our very 
position, by the force of nature or circumstance, is 
often repellant, and the scorn or sympathy of the 
world is turned back, as the rain which beats or 
the warm air which floats up against the sides of 
the house is turned back therefrom wlien the w^in- 
dows are closed. We have protection from the 
rain, it is true, but we lose the fragrance of the per- 
fume. 

But there are times when this isolation is made 
more complete because of surrounding circum- 
stances. A great sorrow the source of which we 
may not tell, a disappointment which we must 
conceal, a lapse which we must cover up, a knowl- 
edge we must hide, or an appetite which we must 
combat, but whose presence we must not declare, 
— each or all of these can produce the same result. 
Many of you, perhaps, understand the philosophy 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 123 

of this statement. You recognize the accuracy of 
the analysis. You have stood the centre of 
some black circle, and felt the agony of the all- 
surrounding pressure, and you know how power- 
less the world is to help you at such moments ; 
how all the wires along which the currents of sym- 
pathy ordinarily flow are cut or made useless by the 
raging of the storm, so that human affection can 
send no message of love, no word of guidance or 
cheer, — the mother is powerless to help the child, 
the wife the husband, or the husband the wife. At 
the two extremes, at the height and depth of hu- 
man feeling, the soul stands alone. When lifted 
upon the crest of some great emotion, or when sunk 
in the depth of despair, its isolation is complete, it 
is too far above or below the ordinary level of 
life to hear or heed its voice. 

It seems to be God's will that at the supreme 
moments of our lives we should be alone with 
Him. Moses must die unattended, and the Christ 
must bear the agony of the Garden when His dis- 
ciples were hesivj with sleep. The great decisions 
of our lives are made when alone, and their great 
griefs are borne with our heads buried in the pil- 
low. More than once are we exiled from the 
world. More than once have we less than an 
island for our home, and a loneliness more deep, 
more oppressive, than the absence of human faces, 
and the limitless reach of water, weighs us down. 



124 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

But, friends, we are never in reality alone, never in 
reality deserted. On our right hand and on our left 
the Invisible walks. "When we stand on the summit 
of our highest joy, the Ineffable is with us ; and 
when we lie in the depth and darkness of our de- 
spair, the Divine Eadiance is there. To the wicked 
this thought is a terror, but to the good and those 
who would be good it is a joy and consolation. The 
fool hath said in his heart, " There is no God ! " 
and he repeats it, hoping by repetition to believe 
the lie ; but he never believes it, and he knows it 
is a lie. Like a snake in torture, he kills himself 
by the poison of his own fangs. But the good 
and those who would be good say each with a 
gladness no voice can ever express, " The Lord is 
my shepherd ; I shall not want." The soul of the 
Christian, confirmed in its faith, and strengthened 
by the grace of God, breaks into song in dying, 
and, like a swan, whose closing note is the sweet- 
est, exclaims, " Tliy rod and Thy staff they comfort 
me ! " the joy of His nearness ! O the glory 
of His presence, in the light of which darkness 
melts, and that gloom which men so dread bright- 
ens into radiance as they pass away ! 

I remark, in the second place, that God is near 
to us in the hour of temptation. 

The existence and operation of a divine infiii- 
ence is no more surely taught in the Scripture than 
is the presence of an evil influence. The angelic 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 125 

and demoniacal influence appear side by side along 
the whole course of Scripture narrative, as two 
clouds appear at times in the heavens, — the one 
charged with positive, the other with negative elec- 
tricity, and darting into each other's bosom, as they 
move along, their fiery opposition. From Eden to 
Christ, from Genesis to Kevelation, the same antag- 
onism of s]3iritual forces is seen ; and to-day we 
are subject to the same hostile forces. Experience 
demonstrates this. How often we have stood con- 
scious of this pressure from either side ! How fre- 
quently we have felt that influences opposite in 
tendency and character were bringing each its dis- 
tinct action to bear upon ns, and our wills and 
feelings were swayed as ships anchored where two 
converging currents meet ! Eor days, perhaps for 
weeks, we have thus stood, our decision held at 
equal poise by opposite motives, or oscillating up 
and down as the higher or lower preponderated. 

No one who has ever debated a question of 
duty, seeking how to avoid it, no one who has ever 
had a temptation of any sort, can doubt that in the 
moral world are two opposite forces, ever at work, 
and at work, too, on him. Even Jesus was not 
exempt from this. The established order of things 
was not modified even to accommodate Him. He 
was tempted in all points like as we are, yet with- 
out sin. 

Now no one can order the time and character 



126 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

of his temptations. An oak might as well try 
to order the force and direction of the gale that 
shall next bear down on it, as for any one of you 
to attempt to say what shall be the nature and 
strength of that temptation which to-morrow shall 
entice us. That is one of the chief sources of our 
weakness. Now and then, it is true, a great cloud 
rolls up from a fixed point, and we know which 
way to scud and what sails to take in. But not 
unfrequently the blackness is spread over the en- 
tire heavens, and not a flash or single jar warns us 
from what quarter the danger is to come. And 
there is not a person here to-night who can tell 
whether he will be tempted on this or that side 
of his nature to-morrow, or whether the pressure 
will be too strong for him or not. 

ISTow there is, as I judge, a very prevalent feel- 
ing that, when a man is being tempted, he is de- 
serted of God. I need not discuss the origin of 
this view. I will remark only concerning the ef- 
fect of it on the tempted person himself, and what 
I regard as the true view. 

ISTow the very feeling that the Tempter wishes 
to produce in the person's mind at the time of his 
being tempted is that he is deserted of God. In 
that thought lies half the force of the temptation. 
The fallen or falling man is made to feel that the 
heavens are black toward him, that God hates 
him on account of his sins, that he has fallen too 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 127 

far ever to recover, and is given over as lost. 
Well does Satan know that from this thought 
will spring a kind of wild recklessness, a despera- 
tion of mind, a sort of mad abandon to sin in its 
license, which will confirm and harden him in 
eveiy wicked course and practice. 

!N"ow, frieiids, that is not my theology. I have 
no idea that the arm of God is around me save 
when I totter, but that the instant I begin to reel 
he withdraws it, and leaves me to stand or fall as 
it may chance. Heaven is no idle spectator of 
liuman struggles, and at every crisis of my life in- 
visible hands have girded my loins and strength- 
ened the braces of my shield. When an army 
goes forth to battle, a true leader goes forth with 
it; and never did a man go out to do battle for 
truth and right, who did not hear, as he advanced, 
the chariot of the Almighty rolling up close be- 
hind him. In the supreme moment of his des- 
tiny, whether of downfall or triumph, God always 
stands by a follower. AMien Satan draws nigh a 
soul in enmity, God draws nigh in its defence. 
When evil triumphs, beats down your guard, 
strikes you to the ground, and stands fiendishly 
victorious, a shield is ofttimes suddenly thrust be- 
tween the soul and his uplifted arm, and the foe 
retires baffled and chagrined. How many such 
deliverances some of us can recall ! How many 
such escapes we have had ! 



128 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

I do not mean to say that a man may not so 
abuse and outrage Divine forbearance as to be ir- 
revocably hardened and given over of God. Sin 
may, undoubtedly, so far produce its logical re- 
sults, even in this life, as to take the very produc- 
tive powers of virtue out of the soul. As it is 
with a barren and sandy plain from which the 
wind has scooped the nourishing soil, so that not 
even a tuft of grass relieves the fierce glitter of 
the noonday sun, so it is possible that here and 
there a man may be living with not a virtue, or 
the germ of a virtue, in his soul. But such a 
being, if such there is, is not a man ; he is a mon- 
ster. He personifies, not sin, but the result of sin, 
yea, of sin long indulged and persisted in. 

But, my hearers, such do not form the rule ; they 
are the exceptions. Men are not monsters, earth 
is not hell, and the full manifestation of the logical 
and ultimate result of sin upon character is not 
beheld here. The human soul is like an instru- 
ment of music jangled and out of tune. It needs 
retuning. It needs the master's hand and the mas- 
ter's touch. The strings are not torn from the 
frame. The keys are not displaced. They are not 
loosened. The discord comes from their temporary 
condition. A fall, a jar, a wrench, has wrought 
confusion. Set them in order, bring them up to 
the line of the correct note ; then sweep them, 
and what melody, what power, w^hat liquid sweet- 
ness of sound shall come out of them ! 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 129 

Now you let a man fall into this condition, and 
what does God do ? desert him, leave him, let him 
alone, give him up ? Why no, that is not Heaven's 
way. Why, think what man has cost God, what 
He has done for him already. The best gauge of 
man's value is the effort God has put forth in his 
behalf. Put Calvary, put all the prophets from 
Moses down, put all the efforts of the Holy Ghost, 
in one scale, and man in the other ; and the balance 
gives the Divine estimate of the human soul, yea, 
of your soul and mine. Who here thought God 
loved him that much ? What one dreamed that 
His determination to save him amounted to that ? 

Now when God sees a man or woman struggling 
with temptation, sees you about to fall, sees the 
wreck and ruin which will result unless He comes 
to your rescue, do you think He stands aloof, in- 
different and regardless how it shall go with you ? 
Do you think Christ could have allowed Peter to 
sink ? Why, the very buoyancy would have gone 
out of Christ Himself, if He had coolly withheld 
Himself from His disciple's rescue. There is not 
an element of the Divine nature, there is not one 
amid the multitude of His mercies, which does not 
mean help and support and salvation to you and 
me, in the hour of our deepest need. There is a 
lily, — He is thoughtful of that. Yet, what is a lily ? 
Pluck it ; fling its leaves into the air ; stand and 
idly watch them as the white fragments of its 

6* I 



130 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 

parted beauty drift down the wind. What has the 
world lost ? The air is not less sweet, the earth is 
not less fair. There is a bird, — a little bunch of 
tuneful down. Even in mid flight, in mid song, 
it rolls upon its back, and falls fluttering to the 
earth. A drop of blood is on its breast, two ruf- 
fled plumes in its broken wing ; it gasps once, a 
convulsion quivers through its little frame, it closes 
its eyes and dies. You walk on. You forget it. 
You wake next morning. The garden is as full of 
song. Your ears miss no note. Yet God saw and 
noted that little bird go down. 

Do you think that He who clothes the lily and 
sees when it is torn, He who keeps watch over 
the birds, and sees when each one falls, has no 
care, no thought, no sympathy for your soul and 
mine when an evil power comes up to blacken it, 
and kill it, yea, take all the fragrance and song 
out of it ? lS[o I no ! Such a being is not my 
God. I^either in supplication nor in praise are my 
hands lifted to such a being. My friend, I dare to 
say that there are black days ahead of me, that the 
future will be as the past, and that more than once 
I shall stand in great peril and near death ; but 
there never will come an hour, from this moment 
to my dying gasp, whether I live rightly or Avrong- 
fully, when God will not stand in love by my side, 
when all a father can do will not be done to save 
me from danger, and my soul from death. 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 131 

Furthermore, the nearness of God to us is seen 
in the various experiences of our life and growth. 
Now it is hard to analyze the sources and causes 
of growth. Ask the rose how it grows. Say to it, 
" Whence came your sweetness and the royal color 
of your leaves ? " and the rising volume of its fra- 
grance is your only answ^er. It cannot say how 
much it owes to the sun, how much to the shower, 
how much to the cloud, nor whether day or night 
brought most of perfume and beauty to it. So it 
is with the soul. You ask one of these aged 
Christians here, — that sweetest one of us aU, that 
one best tinted and ripened for heaven, — whence 
came her purity, her patience, her calm reliance 
and that hope of hers which shines in the horizon 
of her closing life luminous as the evening star, 
when it hangs like a great opal on the western 
rim of the heavens, — and can she tell you ? No ! 
Whether God was nearer to her in youth or age, 
in joy or grief, in hours of obedience or the up- 
rising of great rebellions, in sickness or health, 
strength or weakness, she knoweth not. She only 
knows that she is as she is through the grace of 
God. 

This thought is full of the plumage of golden 
"wings, and lifts the heavy-hearted up. You may 
grope in darkness or walk in light, but He unto 
whom the light and darkness are one is ever with 
you. You may moan or rejoice, but that ear, sen- 



132 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

sitive to every human cry, hears you the same. 
You may be standing erect, with the flush of a 
great triumph in your eyes, or lying prone in the 
dust crushed under a greater defeat ; but the Lord 
is with you still. The heavens may be warm or 
cold, the air filled with sunshine or driving sleet ; 
you may come like a lamb healthy and white from 
play, or craAvl to the door soiled with dirt and gore, 
and cruelly torn by w^olves, but the Shepherd is 
ready to admit and welcome you to the fold. 

Is there some one in this audience, then, whose 
nature is torn and stained ? Indeed, who of us 
is white and whole ? Is there a man or woman 
here who has been in the last years of his life like 
a sheep among wolves, and who is ready to fly 
from danger and pain to the fold of God's love to- 
night ? If so, I bid you come. Come as I came. 
Come just as you are. Wait for nothing, but 
come. Do you think that the blood on the fleece, 
and the marks of the teeth on the throat ever kept 
a sheep from the fold, ever caused it to be turned 
away ? And do you imagine that the failures of 
your past, the ghastly secrets of your life, the 
scars of your sinfulness, the taint of your inward 
defilement, will cause Christ to turn you away ? 
My friend, never believe it. 

Answer me this. Did a mother ever send a child 
away because it was hungry ? Did a father ever 
disown a boy because he was sick and in pain ? 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 133 

Aiid did God eA^er refuse to pardon a sinner be- 
cause he was sinful ? What does your heart say ? 
What does the Bible say ? Say ! It says that 
God " would not that any should perish ; but 
that all might come to the knowledge of the 
truth and live." 

O the power of that blood shed on Calvary ! 
Who can estimate it ? Is there any scarlet so deep 
that it will not wash it white as snow ? Is the 
crimson of any guilt so red that, touched by it, the 
crimson shall not be white as wool ? Ask the 
thief how he came to be in heaven, and he will 
say, " The blood admitted me here." Ask Paul if 
it was his labor, his self-denial for the truth's 
sake, his unflinching constancy, or his heroic vir- 
tues, which gained him tlie crown he wears and 
the fadeless wreath ? And he will exclaim, " No, 
brother, no ! it was not my constancy, nor my self- 
denial, nor my labors and sufferings ; the blood 
alone gained me all this." That Avas the equiva- 
lent which satisfied Divine justice, and gave to 
mercy the opportunity of exercise. And how will 
any of us gain that entrance to heaven for which 
we hope ? By our prayers, think you ? by our 
works ? by any worth or worthiness in us ? I 
warn you not to believe it. On tlie merits of the 
blood, if at all, we shall stand acquitted before 
God. 

But some say that there is no need of the blood. 



134 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

My friends, does the soiled garment need the 
soap? does the withered and dying grass need 
rain ? does the earth need the sun ? does suilt 
need pardon ? Then do you and I, and every soul 
that has acted out its nature in sinfulness, need the 
atoning, reconciling blood of the Saviour. AVhy, 
look at your past. I speak to you who have been 
tossed about on the wild waves of life, who have 
been lifted and cast down, who have suffered and 
sinned. So far as the world knows, so far as the 
world judges, it is an easy, innocent, and comfortable 
past. But in the light of Heaven, in the light of 
our consciences, in the light of our own knowledge, 
it is a grim and ghastly past, — a past we dare not 
show, we dare not face. Who here would live over 
his past, do over all his old deeds, think over his 
old thoughts, go through with all his old experi- 
ences ? Not one. Prepared or unprepared, you 
say, fit or unfit, the grave is welcome. One life is 
enough such as I have lived. I have no heart to 
repeat it. If there is such a thing as purity, if 
there is such a thing as holiness, if there is such 
a place as heaven, — their source, their home, 
their eternal residence, — then must I find a sav- 
iour outside and above myself. This is the con- 
viction of every heart that has intelligently meas- 
ured itself by the Bible standard. If you would 
know how near God draws to you to-day, behold 
that He does it in the blood of His Son, in the 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 135 

privileges of this consecrated hour, in the best im- 
pulses of your hearts, in the fears of the past we 
can never wholly escape, in the hopes of that 
future toward which in thought we fly, as a bird, 
tired and hea\y -laden, with set wings and a glad 
cry, swoops down to her nest. 

I have spoken to you of the nearness of God as 
a fact in our daily life, but what makes that near- 
ness of none effect ? what hand is it that cuts the 
golden wires along which God telegraphs his mes- 
sages of love ? what is it in our atmosphere which 
blurs and distorts his face until it becomes a fear- 
ful visage to our eyes and full of dread ? It is sin ; 
not sin in the abstract, as a principle, but sin as 
committed, sin as indulged. No man hates you 
so much, no man shrinks from looking you in the 
eye so much, as he who has ill treated you. Let a 
man hate you whom you have injured, and there is 
an end to his enmity. Eeparation frank and full 
puts an end to his hard feelilig toward you, and re- 
lays the foundation of prostrated friendship. But 
let a man hate you without cause, save such as 
his envy, or spite, or bigotry, or vanity supplies, 
and his hate is endless. The worst enemy you 
can have is the man who should be your best 
friend; that man's enmity is devilish. Between 
that person and you is a great gulf which his own 
conduct and feeling have digged ; and no generosity, 
no frankness, no honorable treatment, on your part 



136 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

can bridge it. Well, so it is with us in our wick- 
edness toward God. Sin separates us from Him ; 
sin converts all His love into a source of terror ; 
sin makes the thought of His nearness a dread. 
By so much as you do wickedly, by so much does 
God become a being to flee from and avoid ; sin 
takes all the courage out of a man and makes him 
cowardly. How many have died in agony from 
this cause ! Ay, men robust and brawny, who 
could look along the glistening barrel into their 
antagonist's eyes at twelve paces and not flinch, 
have cried out and screamed, and made the cham- 
bers they died in ring with their screams and 
terror. Why ? Why did they shrink from the 
approaching darkness ? Why did their boasting 
depart and their hearts sink within them as they 
saw God, whom they had disobeyed and scoffed at 
and defied, drawing near to them ? — why ? Be- 
cause they had disobeyed and scoff'ed at and de- 
fied Him. That is why they were frightened and 
dreaded to enter His presence. That is the whole 
philosophy of it. If any of you desire to die easily, 
live rightly, as the Spirit directs ; do this, and you 
will go to your grave as a man weary with honest 
toil goes to his couch at night, glad that the day at 
last is ended, and the time for sleep and pleasant 
dreams has come. 

Sin not only separates us from God, but from 
our fellow-men also. There is something delightful 



NEARNESS OF GOD. lo7 

in human fellowship. It is sweet for heart to com- 
mune with kindred heart. It is sweet to share our 
joys and divide our sorrows with those we love ; 
sweet is it to feel that you are kiiown and know ; 
sweet the interchange of thought and sympathy, 
the mingling of common hopes, the division of 
burdens and cares. But sin shuts the mouth and 
closes the heart. It breaks the circuit and inter- 
rupts the current. Guilt makes us dumb. Our 
w^ords by day, our dreams by night, become so 
many avenues of terror. It divides love from 
love, and thereby chokes up the very springs of 
comfort and help. Sin is loneliness. Sin is seclu- 
sion. Even fellowship in guilt loosens not the gag. 
He 'who goes over Niagara cannot take his friends 
with him. 

Am I correct in this ? Is this mere word-paint- 
ing, or accurate analysis ? Frightfully accurate ! 
But, friends, we cannot always conceal our guilti- 
ness ; we cannot forever keep our dungeon. The 
jealously guarded key will at last be snatched from 
our hand, the doors of our secrecy burst open, and 
all the hidden things will come trooj^ing out and 
stand revealed to God and man. AVhat will that 
shame, what wdll that exposure be ! Mark you, 
I am not appealing to fear. I seek to spring no 
trap of conviction upon you. This is statement, 
not exhortation. This is intellectual analysis, — an 
attempt to get at the core of tlie matter, to cata- 



138 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

logue and set in array before you the elements and 
material for future reflection. This is all. Still 
it is wise to anticipate the future, and, my friend, 
when the hour of exposure shall come, as it surely 
win, how will you stand ? When all that is in your 
character shall be revealed, all that you have 
covered with evasion be dragged forth, all you 
have veiled be brought under the focus of that last 
imavoidable investigation, what will be the result ? 
My hearer, you and I may differ on other things, 
but we, knowing ourselves, know this, — that if you 
and I are not covered, are not protected in that 
hour by the mercy of God, we shall stand utterly 
hopeless, — universally abhorred, and universally 
condemned. That is our only hope. Should that 
fail us — I check myself ; I have no heart to 
describe that awful contingency. Some steadier 
hand than mine must draw the dark perspective 
which stretches with ever-thickening blackness 
into eternity. 

Here, then, I pause. Into the life which awaits 
you on the morrow, — if morrow shall be to us, — 
I dismiss you. Its loneliness, its temptations, its 
trials, await you at the door. Amid whatever of 
solitude, amid temptations numberless, amid trials 
not a few, remember that God is near you. The 
stars are distant, but God is this side the stars. 
The heavens are remote, but He who rules them 
from centre to their outermost circumference walks 



NEARNESS OF GOD. 139 

on your right hand and on your left. Sleeping or 
waking, laughing or weej^ing, coming in or going 
out, the Lord is ever with you. This never forget. 
On some future day, even that wliicli shall know 
no night, with a vaster multitude, within a larger 
temple, by the mercy of God, we may perchance 
be permitted to meet. Until which time, living 
ever in hope born of His love, I pray peace be 
with you, even that peace which the wicked 
cannot understand, and which passeth not away. 
Amen. 



140 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON VII. 

DIVINE FKIENDSHIP. 
" A friend of publicans and sinners." — Luke vii. 34. 

THEEE are many pleasant relations whicli men 
sustain to each other in this world. Human 
lives meet and mingle, and are interwoven like 
threads in a texture of glossy richness and mani- 
fold colors, and never does human nature appear 
to better advantage than when seen in the light of 
its relations and connections. No one thread, no 
matter of what richness of color, can rival the 
magnificence of the entire robe. 

There, for instance, is the relation between par- 
ent and child, and it is regarded the world over 
with respect and reverence. There, too, is the re- 
lation of husband and wife, and when represented 
by harmony of taste and temperament between 
the two, you might not find a lovelier exhibition. 
The relations which exist between brothers and 
sisters, between the government and the citizen, 
between the church and its members, — all these 
are pleasant to contemplate, and are productive of 
happiness and profit to man. 

But there is one other relation man can sustain 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 141 

to man, which, as a spontaneous and self-created 
impulse of one soul for another soul, as an evi- 
dence of mutual likes and aspirations, and as a 
proof, in its higher exhibitions of itself, of con- 
stancy and unselfish benevolence, is inferior to no 
other. I refer to the relation which exists between 
all true friends, — honest, sincere friendship. 

In the relation of parent and child, authority on 
the one hand and obedience on the other occupy 
the foreground. In man's relation to the govern- 
ment, material interests may preponderate. Love 
is by nature selfish in its appropriation of its ob- 
ject, — flowing with a swifter and rougher tide. 
But in friendship, neither authority nor obedience, 
neither material considerations nor feverish ex- 
citement, enter as an inciting cause or result. It 
flows from source to termination with a deep, even, 
and ever- widening current, — a safe, a lovely, and 
a fruitful stream. 'No wrecks line its shores ; no 
waves of passion beat mercilessly upon its beach ; 
no corses float alonor its current. Societv owes to 
its humanizing influence more than it can ever 
express, and God regards it with pleasure and 
complacency. 

Now this is the relation which Christ is said to 
sustain to mankind in our text. In the Bible he 
is presented to us in many aspects, — as a Judge, 
a Saviour, a Councillor ; as a Brother, Prophet, 
Priest and King, — but in this passage he stands 
forth in the light and garb of a Friend^ 



142 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

Christ as the Friend of man is, therefore, the 
theme of this discourse. 

I do not intend to analyze friendship, and enu- 
merate its elements. I will only suggest one or 
two of the more prominent. The first of which 
is Constancy. 

A true friend is constant. Circumstances may 
change and many desert, but he remains the same. 
You yourself may change. Sickness may sap 
your powers, misfortune make you its sport, and 
reduce you to despair. You may be corroded with 
the rust of the world, but no lapse on your part 
can divert his sympathy. Let but a cry escape 
your lips, and he will be at your side. Let a blow 
be aimed at you, and his will be the hand to throw 
it up. When other voices clamor to your dis- 
credit, his will stem the torrent of abuse, and 
throw the weight of his reputation and advocacy 
into the scale of your defence. 

Now all this and much more can be said of 
Christ in His feelings toward every one of you 
here to-night. I say every one. I do not wish 
you to understand that Christ is a friend to the 
good and pure alone, if such there be here ; nor 
to those who are correct in their deportment, — 
whose virtue w^alks into men's acknowledgment 
unquestioned. ISTo ; I launch the friendship of 
Christ out among you to-night as men launch a 
life-boat among a struggling mass of drowning 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 143 

men, and there is not a hand beating the briny 
water, swarth or white, that may not seize it, and 
there is not a sinking soul in this audience that 
may not appropriate the friendship of the Lord. 

Now I suppose some of you have failed. In- 
deed, we have all failed ! But I suppose that some 
of us have failed more than others. We have 
been tempted by others, and we have tempted our- 
selves. We have been pierced by arrows shot at 
us from a distance, and we have taken knives and 
opened our own veins. We have fought enemies 
without, and we have had a greater enemy within, 
and more than once have we been tempted to say : 
" It is of no use for me to try to be good. The more 
I try, the more I fail. I have forfeited my self-re- 
spect and God's love long ago. I will give it up." 

My friend and brother, don't you give it up. 
While the Friend of publicans and sinners sits 
on the judgment-seat, you have no right to despair. 
Do not be discouraged. His friendship for you is 
the same — as fresh, as sincere, as strong — to-night 
as it ever was. Your despondency is cowardly and 
wicked, and from the Devil. There is not another 
arrow in his full quiver with which the Adversary 
pierces so many souls to their death as despair. 
When a man desponds of being better, when a 
woman feels that the path to the throne is so steep 
that she never can climb it, then, if funeral-bells 
were ever tolled in heaven, might thev swing their 



144 MUSIC-HALL SERiMONS. 

heaviest dirge. Sucli despair is utterly groundless, 
and the Tempter, even as he urges it home upon 
you, knows it. Doubt father and mother, doubt 
husband and wife, but never doubt the friendship 
of the Lord Jesus Christ for your soul. In the 
still watches of the night, when memory, remorse- 
fully busy, will not let you sleep, out of the dark- 
ness shape a celestial figure, and say to it, " Lord, re- 
member me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom " ; 
and in response, breaking the dreadful silence and 
the spell of your desjDair, shall sound the words, " Lo, 
T am with you alway even unto the end of the world." 

When your soul wanders in darkness, which its 
own evil thoughts and deeds have spread over it ; 
when you revolt at confession, and imprison your- 
self in your own secrecy, go and tell Him of all 
your struggles and agonies, your failures and crimes, 
and thus roll the burden off at the foot of the 
cross. Why at the foot of the cross ? Because 
there it was that His blood fell, — the blood which 
came from His hands and head and feet, and 
gushed from His spear-riven side, when He in His 
own person bore the penalty of human sin, and 
made atonement to the transgressed law, — the 
blood which cleanseth whiter than fuller's soap, 
and, washed in which, your sins and mine, thougli 
they be as crimson, shall become as wool. 

This constancy and impartiality of Christ's friend- 
ship are what make Jesus such a Saviour as He 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 145 

is. This is what makes Him, the world over, and in 
all ages, so near and dear to His foUoAvers ; and this, 
too, it is, which lifts the Gospel plan of the atone- 
ment above all philosophies and codes of ethics. 

If He was a friend only to the good, or to us 
only in so far as we are good, what sort of a Sav- 
iour would He be ? What application would the 
Gospels have to the race as a race ? Philosophy 
does very well to amuse, and perchance profit the 
learned. Ethics supply the virtuous with needed 
and salutary rules of life. But what will you do 
with those who are neither good nor learned ? 
What would the religion of Horticultural Hall 
do for the low and vicious, — for the ignorant by 
reason of neglect, and for the ignorant by reason of 
circumstance, — for the heathen, and those of us 
who feel that, if God is just and decides on the 
merits of a case, we stand guilty and condemned 
before Him to-night ? Is there not a craving, my 
hearer, in your heart and mine, for a personal Sav- 
iour, a living, breathing, ever-constant friend ; be- 
side whom rules, maxims, and speculations are no 
more than dry and scentless rose-leaves are to our 
nostrils. 

Now every life has its different moods and 
ranges of thought and phases of experience. We 
do not live on one dead level from cradle to grave ; 
no, nor on the same level any one day through. 
It is marvellous what sharp changes, what sudden 
7 J 



146 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

fluctuations, there may be in our experiences be- 
tween the morning and evening of the same day. 
I have often thought that, in the character and 
changes of his life, man is as the sky, now all 
aflame with the uprising glory of some sun-like 
impulse, and anon black with clouds and full of 
tempestuous violence. And what we need is a 
Saviour who will be a Saviour to us at all times, 
and in every mood and temper. The friendship 
we need is a friendship Avhich will be the same in 
its helpful and saving relations to us, w^hether we 
kneel at the altar or stand white and haggard on 
the scaffold's edge. 

This brings us to the second element we were to 
mention, namely. Sympathy. 

Of all helps given of God none is sweeter, more 
consoling, more strengthening, at times, than sym- 
pathy. There are seasons in life when it is to 
the soul what dew is to a parched and drooping 
flower. But sympathy is not open to all. It has 
limitations in its nature and exercise. • In order to 
sympathize with a person you must possess the 
power to understand and appreciate the moods and 
thoughts of that person. A coarse nature cannot 
interpret the trials and experiences of a refined 
one. A practical mind cannot sympathize with an 
imaginative one. There are ranges of feeling pecu- 
liarly individual, at least peculiar to a class of 
individuals ; and the hopes, yearnings, and trials 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 147 

which one heart may feel may be utterly unintel- 
ligible to another. Take birds as an illustration. 
They feed on different kinds of food : what one 
eats another rejects ; what one recognizes as con- 
tainmg the elements its structure demands the 
other turns from as not belonging to its order of 
diet. Each has its own peculiar method of eating 
also. One will eat sitting on the limb of a tree, 
another floating on the surface of the water ; while 
a third eats on the wing, searching the air for food, 
darting and wheeling this way and that, making 
the necessity of its lower organization minister to 
the exercise and amusement of its higher. So is 
it with men. There are many species in one in- 
tellectual and moral genus. The moral nature of 
one feeds on this, another on that. One class 
of minds gets growth and strength from wdiat 
another class rejects as injurious. Thoughts and 
yearnings which are the daily food of one soul are 
fanciful, vain, and utterly incomprehensible to 
another. 

Owing to this diversity of taste in people, it is 
not always possible to extend a healthful and 
grateful sympathy to one needing it. For you 
do not understand, and therefore cannot appre- 
ciate, the weakness, temperament, and trials of the 
person distressed. How often we encounter such 
cases ! Their humors baffle us, their sayings be- 
wilder us ; we doubt the reality of their experi- 



148 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

ences, and deem their words fligMy. But let this 
power to understand and appreciate your words 
and feelings be given one, — one whom when you 
meet him you instinctively know and feel under- 
stands you; to whom your words are not vague 
and senseless ramblings of mind ; who can catch at 
your thought as a quick-witted person catches at a 
hint ; who can put himself at your stand-point, 
and look at your life and troubles for a moment 
through your eyes ; who, without having felt 
them, understands your feelings ; who appreciates 
your errors and your virtues, sees your weak 
points and your strong ones ; who is able to inter- 
pret yourself to yourself, and thus add to your 
inward knowledge ; — such a person, and such a 
person alone, is able fully to sympathize with you. 
He understands you, and his knowledge is the 
medium through which he imparts his sympathy. 
Others may stand silent and powerless in the pres- 
ence of your sorrow, but he is able to say the 
needed and comforting word. Others may mis- 
judge you, but he is guided to the right conclusion 
by his sure analysis. His presence is a source of 
strength and moral inspiration to you. Around 
him the wings of your better life escape the 
vacuum, and find an atmosphere which they 
can beat, and on which they can rise. 

I cannot but think that it was this faculty to 
understand and appreciate the nature and need of 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 149 

every human heart, finding infinite expression in 
Him, which so strongly and tenderly drew people 
toward Christ. He conld sympathize witli the 
publican because he saw in their true liglit the ad- 
verse social surroundings of the man, and the terri- 
ble strength of his temptations. Everybody seems 
to have been drawn to Christ. He magnetized 
people with the magnetism of His goodness. His 
character in its tenderness and completeness was 
a revelation. He was such to the fallen woman 
whom he saved from death at the hands of a 
brutal mob, and sent with tender exhortation from 
his presence. She had doubtless seen many good 
men, but never such a man as Christ. She had 
wickedly studied human nature on many sides, the 
better to practise her arts, perhaps ; but here was 
a new revelation, and a phase of mercy she had 
never beheld. Over her swept the wave of a new 
and holy influence as He spoke to her. She felt 
for the first time that she was in the presence of 
One who knew her as she really was. 

The very children loved Jesus. How could they 
help it ? Do you think a perfect flower can com- 
mand admiration, and the perfect Man of all the 
ages go unnoticed ? Throngs followed Him where- 
ever He went across the country, listening eagerly 
to His every word, and passing it from lip to lip. 
What a pity every w^ord, every syllable, that He 
uttered could not have been reported and pre- 



150 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

served ! What a pity that this sole, this Tiniqne 
Man of all the generations of men conld not have 
been presented to us in His every phase of speech. 
His every shade of thought ! "We only know that 
in Him was a wonderful charm, an inexpressible 
attractiveness. The Pharisees, it is true, hated 
Him ; but they hated Him because they felt that 
He knew them, that He saw clearly through their 
hypocrisy and their cant. 

!N"ow I wish you all to feel, and to feel it in every 
drop of your blood to-night, that Christ as your 
friend sympathizes with you at all times and in 
all the moral conditions of your nature. Do not 
think that He sympathizes with you and loves 
you when in your best moods only ; for if you 
should you would wrong Him bitterly. A bird is 
no more surely noted by the Father of all when, 
glancing upward through the morning light, he 
pours his liquid notes upon the fragrant air, than 
when, stricken by cruelty or evil chance, he lies 
fluttering, a bunch of ruffled and bloody plu- 
mage, upon the dewy lawn. And so it is with us, 
good friends. Our souls are not known and noted 
of God the most when, light and tuneful, they are 
lifted in ecstasy upward ; but equally watched and 
as tenderly loved are we, when, stricken in hope, 
and soiled in spirit, we lie groaning and stunned, 
our purposes broken, our virtue stained, our future 
dark and forbidding. 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 151 

AATiy, think of it ! Do we love our loved ones 
only when they are strong and healthy and pros- 
perous ? Or is there something in weakness and 
sickness and adversity which draws from us a 
fuller and deeper tide of feeling toward those 
who are dependent on us ? Say, mothers, do you 
love your children less when they are sick ? Do 
you, father, yearn over your boy less when he is 
rebellious ? I know your answer. There is 
something in love which survives all changes of 
condition, which keeps its gro^\i:h long after the 
gray veil that no mortal hand may lift has fallen 
over the face of the wearied sleeper. But do you 
think that you can show a higher type of character 
than Christ ? Are our hearts warmer, is our love 
truer, is our friendship more enduring, than the 
heart and love and friendship of the Lord Jesus ? 
Who can say it ? Who can think it ? 

But the peculiarity which most distinguishes 
friendship, and makes a friend so near and dear 
to us, is that it inspires one with the spirit of 
helpfulness. A friend means aid in time of need. 
In assistance cordially rendered he gives his feel- 
ings their proper expression. So essential and 
inherent is this sentiment to the very idea of 
friendship that you cannot conceive of the two 
being separated. You might as well attempt to 
conceive of day without light, or a stream without 
a current, as to try to picture friendship unin- 



152 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

spired with such a motive. A person who would 
stand and lift no hand to your assistance when 
assistance was needed would forfeit in every 
one's estimation the title of friend. . Not only at 
the moments of extreme necessity and peril, but 
also in the round of every-day life and experi- 
ence, a friend serves you to the utmost of his 
power. When your ability is underrated, when 
your integrity is called in question, when your 
actions are misunderstood, and your words igno- 
rantly or maliciously perverted, the voice and tes- 
timony of friendship are lifted in your defence. 
Ko person in business and professional life ever 
knows how many unselfishly and nobly are thus 
doing him service. No man knows how much 
the success of his life is owing to the strong cur- 
rent of approval started and continued in his fa- 
vor by the unknown but efficient advocacy of 
his friends. Now and then it is given to one to 
ascertain the names and service of these friends ; 
and many of you can bear witness that the names 
of those who spoke strong and brave words for 
you when strong and brave words were needed 
are never forgotten. 

But, my hearers, it is unto Christ that you must 
look if you would see this the strongest and 
noblest element of friendship brought out in the 
clearest light. The friendship of Christ means as- 
sistance in the highest sense. He helps you by 



DIVINE FKIENDSHIP. 153 

His guidance and consolation on earth, and He 
will help you by His powerful advocacy when you 
stand before God in heaven. I trust none of us 
have lived altogether in vain ; that our lives have 
not been altogether wrong, and that many on 
earth, and not a few in heaven, have cause to 
bless us. But we have also wrought wickedness 
at times. Our own consciences, imperfectly edu- 
cated as they are, accuse us of sin ; and what we 
need, what every one of you need, is a divine, a 
constant, sympathetic, and capable friend to plead 
our cause for us at the bar of God. If any atone- 
ment has been made to the transgressed law, if 
any equivalent to deserved penalty has been of- 
fered to Divine justice, whereby the condemnation 
can be lifted from my soul, then do I beseech that 
through the friendly offices of Christ it may be 
set to my account. I trust my case, otherwise 
hopeless, to the hands of the great Advocate, and 
have hope that His merits may make good my ill- 
desert. 

I ask you to note the class and moral character 
of the people to whom Christ was a friend. The 
text says that He was a friend of " publicans and 
sinners," — that is, of those who are morally all 
wrong ; whose very name and office had become 
a byword and synonyme of wickedness and evil 
thinking and evil doing. The Saviour I preach, 
as moved by the spirit of sincerity, and I trust of 

7* 



154 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

enlightened understanding, is a Saviour of men 
and women who are morally all out of the way. 
It is to you whose lives have been as it were a 
failure, whose natures, spiritually considered, are 
all in ruins, that Jesus comes in the spirit of 
friendly assistance to-night. You stand, it may 
be, amid broken purposes and overthrown resolu- 
tions and shivered hopes, and Christ, the great 
builder up of prostrated virtue, comes to your 
souls this evening, and, looking upon the ruin and 
waste which sin has caused, upon crushed hopes 
and buried expectations, says to you, " Come, let us 
clear away this rubbish, and, working in harmony, 
your will with mine, side by side, we will raise 
out of these fragments a structure of w^hich the 
heavens shall not be ashamed." It is astonishing 
how far a little human material will go in such an 
undertaking under the supervision of Christ. 

This is the spirit which pre-eminently charac- 
terizes Christianity. It is to the Gospel plan of 
salvation what the odor is to the flower, — the most 
subtile and exquisite expression of it. The very 
chiefest reason why Christianity has a right to 
claim your adherence is because she comes to you 
as a friend and assistant. She goes up to a man 
and says to him, " Here, you are having a hard 
time of it ; let me help you." If he is blind, she 
says, " Give me your hand, I will lead and guide 
you." If disappointed, chafed, and despondent. 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 155 

she cries out clieerily to liim, " Cheer up, friend, 
God never made such a being as y©u to de- 
spair." If suspicious, bitter, and cruel, she ex- 
claims, " Why do you make a devil of yourself ? 
You were not created to hate and hurt men, but to 
assist and bless them." If one is getting gross and 
heavy in his tendencies and tastes ; if his mind is 
being polluted and his nature soiled; if appetite 
is getting the mastery over reason, she plants her- 
self squarely before him, and shouts, " Why do 
you make a brute of yourself? Are you not 
ashamed to go into the gutter with swine ? Come, 
wash and be more cleanly, and live as one of your 
make should live." This is the way religion helps 
a man. It helps him as a pruning-knife in a skil- 
ful hand helps a tree, — lopping off the dead, sog- 
gy branches, and pruning away the excrescences ; 
not only so, — it helps him affirmatively as well 
as negatively. Where a vice had grown it inserts 
a virtue ; where a thorn had protruded a blossom 
appears. The man thus gains in a double sense. 
He loses what tends toward death, and gains 
what adds to the development of his higher life. 
Piety is expansion. It does not cramp and fet- 
ter the nature. It enlarges and liberalizes it ; 
shoots it out in all manner of new activities, and 
widens it with a thousand generous impulses. A 
small mean man cannot represent Christianity 
any more than a dwarf pear-tree can represent a 



156 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

forest. You must have some girth and altitude to 
you, if you would advertise religion. The church 
is not a treadmill, as some seem to regard it, where 
sad -featured men and women toil and tramp con- 
tinually between set limits, longing to break loose 
and dash out, but are unable. It is a gymnasium 
rather, in which are vast appliances with which to 
exercise and develop the soul, and thereby add 
unto your nature a new vigor, a moral flexibility, 
a spiritual elasticity, in order that in the end (to 
continue the figure), when your grossness has been 
sweated off, and every power and faculty trained 
to the last degree of its capacity, you may be 
able, with death for your spring-board, to vault 
joyfully above the stars. The religion of Christ 
teaches a man that it is better to fly than to 
crawl ; that virtue is sweeter than A^ce ; that re- 
straint is nobler than license ; and that man, I care 
not how poor, weak, and erring he may be, may, 
by the grace of God, yet recover himself, and go to 
the grave with a hope in him that shall cause tlie 
portals of it to glow like the illuminated gateway 
of a palace when the king returns from battle, 
preceded by news of a glorious victory. 

Let no one dare to preach, under the name of 
religion, a set of dry, juiceless dogmas to this gener- 
ation, when men long to hear the glad news of hu- 
man progress and human redemption. Every chord 
of my nature harmonizes with this popular note. 



r '-' 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 15 

It is not theology, the science of God, so much as 
biology, the science of living, that I would impress 
upon you to-night. I would not, if I could, put 
any of you here into the strait-jackets of the 
schools. A man must be of stunted stock indeed, 
if he cannot grow so as to burst the lacings of 
any creed man ever devised. Creeds and formu- 
las as the main-springs of Christian activity are 
of 'the past. They were born, undoubtedly, in part 
of the Spirit of God, but also in part of the spirit 
of human bigotry and bitterness and ignorance. 
The banner over us to-night, under which we are 
all marshalled, is not emblazoned with the name 
of Arminius, or Calvin, or Wesley, or Knox ; but 
another name is on it, and the letters of fadeless 
light illuminate it from staff to border. It is the 
name by which God is kno^^^l in heaven and on 
earth, — Love. The creed of a church is good for 
nothing save as it aids the church to better ex- 
press its life and purpose and faith in Jesus 
Christ, and its yearning sympathy for man. The 
life which is yet to be lived ere our Lord and 
King shall come with His holy angels, marching 
visibly through the heavens in long and majestic 
processions of power, wdll not be inspired by the 
past, but by the future, — that future in which 
Jehovah yet veils Himself, patiently biding the 
hour for the perfect manifestation of His presence. 
The present, which some hastily call the hour of 



158 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

noonday glory, will appear to the ages ahead, 
when, teeming with life, they shall look backward 
upon it, as the dawn and twilight period of the 
church. Many a throne is to be levelled, ma.ny 
a system of error broken into fragments, ere the 
one throne and the perfect system of truth shall 
have been erected and inaugurated. The time is 
to be when God shall pour out His Spirit upon 
all flesh,, and " your young men shall see visions, 
and your old men shall dream dreams." Then 
shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, full-orbed, 
resplendent with unshorn beams, every ray ful- 
filling its ministry of healing, and the light of it 
illuminating the earth from pole to pole. I live 
my life as a man whom every passing day brings 
nearer and nearer to fuller manifestations of God's 
power, to clearer exhibitions of the Spirit's ener- 
gy, to a wider diffusion of Christian dispositions 
among mankind. The white and the black, the 
learned and the ignorant, shall yet stand together, 
angelic in their disposition and works, hand linked 
in hand, wing enfolding wing, in the unity of long- 
lost but acknowledged brotherhood, — the unity 
of perfect love. Draw, then, men and women, 
your inspiration from the future. The air which 
drifts up from the past is heavy and dark with 
the mould and rank odor of ruins. Keep your 
faces turned fixedly and reverently ahead, and let 
the future, when the earth shall be full of the 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 159 

glory of tlie Lord, blow its perfumed breezes into 
your nostrils. Look and beliold breaking through 
and scattering the inist of to-day the effulgence 
which streams upon you from to-morrow. 

As I draw nigh to the closing words, let me 
speak to you directly of Christ. Let me lift, with 
a hand which will probably never lift it again be- 
fore you all, the Cross of Calvary, — for that is the 
symbol of Christ's friendship for you, and the sole 
emblem of our fadeless hope. I would point you 
to the blood that was shed for you. I would re- 
peat, ere my voice pass from your ears forever, the 
invitation and assurance of your ever-constant, 
ever-sympathetic, ever-helping Friend, — " Come 
unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, 
and I will give you rest." woman, worn and 
bowed beneath cares and sorrows your laughing 
youth could not foresee, — O man, fretted and 
chafed, grimly enduring yet longing for rest, — 
and aU you who stagger along your uneven paths, 
bearing up under failure and disappointment, and 
the load of your passions, with a bravery deserv- 
ing a better cause and a better success, go and lay 
yourselves down under the shadow of the Eock. 
Lying there in humble dependence, the peace 
which passeth understanding shall descend upon 
you, as the dews of summer distil upon the 
earth, and you shall see, as Jacob in his dream 
of old time, angels ascending and descending, — 



160 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

going up with your petition, and returning with 
supplies for all your needs. 

As one who simulates no feeling, who never yet 
exaggerated his anxiety to supply his audience 
with a motive to act, who recognizes in the liberty 
he claims for his own mind the fullest liberty on the 
part of yours to decide, free from all outside press- 
ure, this question of your immortal condition, — 
speaking thus, and in such a spirit, I urge you to no 
longer hesitate in what your reason and conscience 
tell you is right. Make and speak now that needed 
and noble resolution, which at many times of your 
life you have been on the point of making, but 
foolishly postponed. March no longer toward the 
grave as toward an enemy, but make your ap- 
proach unto it as men journey toward the gateway 
of a palace, which, built at infinite cost, they have 
inherited in the line of royal succession. 

I close with the thought, that, through the ap- 
propriated friendship of Christ, much which you 
have missed in this mortal hfe will be made up to 
you beyond the grave. In the gift of heaven is 
included all lesser gifts. Loves we have lost or 
barely missed, virtues we sought but might not 
attain, and the fulfilment of many a rudely inter- 
rupted dream, will greet us there. At death we 
shall have the opportunity to make a new start. 
AVe shall select and discard with a higher intel- 
ligence than guides us here. Beyond the grave we 



DIVINE FRIENDSHIP. 161 

may not have the ordering of our lives, but we 
shall have great liberty in choosing, — even the 
liberty of the children of God. We shall be linked 
with whatever is most kindred to us in fibre and 
feeling, and streams widely apart on earth will 
converge in Christ, and, mingling, flow in union 
under that nightless sky forever. Many a blunder 
will be corrected, and many a failure made good 
there. I trust, good friends, that through the friend- 
ship of Christ, and our hearty acceptance of His 
assistance, it may chance that we shall meet in a 
temple far larger than this, not built by hands, and 
engage in purer worship with a numberless mul- 
titude beyond the skies, whose spaces, adorned of 
God, spread over our heads. 



162 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON" YIII. 

HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 

" And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired 
to have you, that he may sift you as wheat : but I have prayed 
for thee that thy faith fail not ; and when thou art converted, 
strengthen thy brethren." — Luke xxii. 31, 32. 

SOONEE or later every Christian passes through 
a sifting process, — a process of temptation 
and trial, of failure and fall. The path which 
leads us to the beautiful gate is steep and rugged. 
'No foot treads it far without faltering ; no pilgrim 
enters the golden street with his sandals unworn ; 
no head feels the blessed pressure of the crown 
which has not borne the markings of the thorn. 

The words of our text introduce to your atten- 
tion a disciple of Christ, when standing upon the 
brink of a great temptation, and a greater fall. 
He was about to be put under a pressure of which 
he did not dream. That pressure was to be too 
severe for him. He was to do a deed which will 
stand to his shame and humiliation, so long as the 
world endures. He was, as his Divine Master 
plainly said, about to be " sifted " by the Adversary. 

There are two thoughts in connection with this 



"O" 



text. I wish to sucrgest two lessons which I would 



•^ftt) 



impress upon your minds and hearts. The first is, 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 163 

the feeling of Christ toward Peter, and those who 
fall like Peter. The second is, the hope and duty 
of the fallen. 

I would first, in order to expand the subject, 
call your attention to the clause, " I have prayed 
for thee." 

You observe that the singular number of the 
pronoun is used. Of all the disciples who were 
to be sifted, or brought under temptation, it was 
to Peter alone that His heart went out in ursjent 
entreaty. But why for Peter rather than for the 
others ? Why should the merciful feelings of 
His heart be concentrated on him ? Was it be- 
cause he was nearer and dearer and more amiable 
than the others ; more equitable in disposition, 
more exemplary and mild ? Xo, for he was the 
reverse of this. Peter's eminence among the dis- 
ciples at this time was not of this kind. He was 
hot-headed, rash, and egotistical, unstable and in- 
consistent. At one moment he was brave as a 
lion, heroic in all his impulses, and tense in all his 
purposes ; the next he was timid, vacillating, 
and cowardly. You see him at one moment, sword 
in hand, foremost to defend his Master ; the next 
he stands by the fire in the court-yard stamping 
and swearing, denying with oaths that he knew 
any such man as Jesus. But why should Christ 
pray for such a man ? one is naturally led to in- 
quire. ^Miy did His love go out so warmly and 



164 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

tenderly toward one capable of so mucli treach- 
ery and falsehood, one so selfish and unreliable ? 
Why select him from the other disciples, and 
lavish upon him so much tender solicitude and 
prayer ? 

Now, friends, learn what sort of a man Christ 
was, and what a moral phenomenon He was and 
is to the world. If you place your eye close to a 
hole in perforated j)aper, through an opening no 
larger than a pin's head you can see a landscape 
whose diameter is measured by miles, and whose 
limit is the limit of human vision. And so 
through this passage, when attentively considered, 
you will see how the nature of Christ unrolls 
itself; and the moral prospect the mind beholds 
is boundless and superlatively beautiful. 

No, it was not because Peter was lovely and 
mild and consistent, but because he was just the 
reverse of all this, that Jesus prayed for him. It 
was not because he was strong and well braced, but 
because he was weak and liable to fall, that He 
remembered him. It was not because he was con- 
sistent and grave, and above suspicion — such as 
would make a good candidate for the deaconship 
to-day — that His heart yearned toward him, but 
because he was unsteady and fickle and noto- 
riously reckless. I wish you all to observe here 
— for I know that it will comfort some of you — 
that the mercy of Christ abounds in the quality of 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 165 

discrimination. It adapts itself to man's needs, 
and flows according to the measure of those needs. 
I have heard it said that there is a law in nature 
by wliich the broken branch of the tree, and the 
bruised violet, and the ^vrenched shrub, and what- 
ever else in the natural kingdom is maimed and 
hurt, draws the necessary elements of healing from 
the atmosphere ; that the sun and wind and dew, 
the shadows that cool and the rays that w^arm, be- 
come physicians to it, and perform their free and 
unwearied ministries of love and healing. I have 
often thought how exactly this symbolized the 
nature of Christ and the operations of His love. 
Wherever you find a hurt or wound in the mor- 
al world, the healing influence of His love is 
drawn to it. Wherever you find a man wrenched 
and broken down in his hopes, — wherever you 
find a woman fallen and crushed, wdierever a 
soul unstable and reckless, wherever any throe 
and agony, any crying and wrestling, any strug- 
gling and downfall, there Christ is. In thought 
not a few reverse this law. They forget that 
the love of God in its benevolent operations in- 
creases by the ratio of our needs, and that the 
lower down we are the stronger is the attraction 
which God centres upon us from above. At this 
point w^ill doubtless occur to you all the cheering 
and infinitely tender w^ords of Christ, when He 
said, " I came not to call the righteous but sinners 



166 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

to repentance " ; and that other sentence, which 
carries with it the force of a demonstration, — 
" The whole need not a physician, but they that 
are sick." 

Now men differ in blood and temper, in taste 
and feeling, as widely as in the build of their bod- 
ies and in the look of their faces. Now and then 
you meet a man or woman made as the birds are, 
to fly and sing. In all their inclinations, in all 
their propensities and aspirations, they are feath- 
ered and plumed for flight. There is little virtue, 
relatively considered, in some men being noble and 
generous, and some women being pure and gentle, 
because it requires little effort on their part to be 
thus. They were biassed toward such things at 
birth. They were dowered in their cradles with 
such qualities by their parents. And what a 
heritage it was ! And how low and mean does 
any legacy of stocks and money appear beside it ! 
Knovv and remember to-night that those parents 
who keep their bodies free from debasing appetites, 
and their minds uncontaminated by impure im- 
aginations, shall, in bringing forth children like 
unto themselves, add beyond all other efforts of 
their lives to the bodily health and moral vigor 
of the world. I am fast coming to think that 
two thirds of every generation are mortgaged to 
the Devil before they are born, and that it takes 
twenty years of care and education to unrivet the 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 167 

fetters which, by their own lack of control and 
dissolute lives, the parents fasten on their chil- 
dren. 

But, as I was saying, people differ. To some 
refinement is natural, and virtue easy. I have 
known women float through life as a Avliite lily on 
a darkened stream, — beings of beauty and fra- 
grance, buoyed up so airily by the natural encase- 
ments of their virtue, that not a drop or stain 
might touch or soil the exquisite whiteness of 
their souls. But others I have known that were 
like a lily, anchored by a law of its birth in a cur- 
rent, and it was swayed from side to side, and 
buffeted, and not a moment was there in which it 
was not threatened with submersion. Men, too, 
I have known, who were like granite columns, 
shapely, ponderous, immovable. Neither wind nor 
rain, no, nor the converging pressures of many 
wicked influences, could move them an inch. 
But others there are like reeds and rushes, weak 
and willowy, who cannot stand alone, but must 
stand in contact with and supported by many 
others, if they stand at all. Here is one that 
might seem almost a model, and you wish that all 
might be born like him. But anon you come 
across another, so weak and mean and effeminate 
that you wonder how he came to be born at all. 
He is a miraculous creation in an infinitesimal 
direction ! 



168 MUSIC-HALL SERxMONS. 

Times and seasons also makfe a vast difference 
with men in their moral relations. 

'Now there are seasons when, morally and so- 
cially, our experiences are as warm and genial and 
equitable as weather in early June, — when all our 
surroundings are fragrant, and the hours breezy with 
good news ; when everything seems to be shaped 
for our comfort and prosperity ; when health and 
credit are good, all our enterprises well-timed 
and successful, all our investments yielding good 
returns, and old debtors, from whom we had 
expected nothing, astonish us by their honesty. 
Kow at such a time it is not difficult for a business- 
man to be good, any more than it is for a boy to 
sing or whistle when, with his fishing-rod over his 
shoulder, he goes with great swinging strides down 
the hill toward the trout-brook. There is no temp- 
tation for him to shorten or neglect family prayers, 
to be gruff to his wife or hard on his clerks, to drive 
his bargains to the very verge of dishonesty, to 
undermine his health by overwork, or commit sui- 
cide. When everything is prosperous and sunny, 
I say, a business-man has no temptation to be dis- 
honest and unchristian. 

But wait awhile. The season changes. June 
gives place to December. The sky gets black and 
squally. The wind veers, and, instead of coming 
like a warm, perfumed breath out of the south, it 
is poured in gusts and currents out of the north 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 169 

flecked with snow and dreary with sleet, which 
drenches the garments and chills through to the 
bone. Then is come the hour of weakness and 
trial. When credit sinks, and friends get sus- 
picious, and investments yield nothing but loss, 
and the anxious brain carries its burden clean 
through the hours of sleep, and he rises unre- 
freshed, and failure stands not three days ahead of 
him, — this is the day and the hour when a busi- 
ness-man needs the assurance that, if there is sym- 
pathy for weakness in heaven, he has it. Many 
a man, as you know, has in such an hour closed 
his ledger with a groan, placed a pistol to his tem- 
ples, and recklessly made for himself a blood-path 
out of his misfortunes or his shame. But I often 
think that the mercy of God is greater than some 
suppose, and that many a poor, harassed, crazed 
merchant, whose name is stricken in disgrace from 
the book of earthlv exchanoe, will find it entered 
in the Lamb's book of life, and live to glorify for- 
ever the love which was greater than liis guilt. 

Now I want you to feel, all of you, that the 
mercy of God is full of discrimination in the time 
and measure of its outgoing. It goes out most 
strongly to the Petera of the world, and in the 
hour of their greatest temptations. God never 
leaves those who are in alliance with him to fight 
their battles alone. Ahead of you are temptations 
many, and struggles not a few. You will descend 
8 



170 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

more than once to the arena and the assault, more 
than once be tempted to desert and deny your 
Lord ; but strengthen yourselves with the thought 
that the heavens are prayerful for you. The Sav- 
iour foresees, as he foresaw in the case of Peter, 
how you are to be tried, and remembers you in his 
prayer. The prayer of Christ is worth more to 
man than weapon of steel or armor of brass. One 
word of intercession from Him avails beyond all 
our calling and crying. Yea, I could die mute and 
content, did I but know that my Saviour pleaded 
for me. 

Now, as I have said, the future may be full 
of trial. There is nothing so black that it may 
not contain, — nothing so venomous but that 
it may lie coiled in it, ready to strike and fang 
you. But, fellow- Christians, let none of these 
things disturb you. Out of the future, out of its 
possible darkness and disaster, sound the strong, 
cheerful words of Christ, — " Ye believe in God, 
believe also in me." And the saints ready for the 
coffin check their feet on the borders of the grave 
for a moment, and, looking back toward us, with 
their faces already touched with the light of the 
eternal world, say, " Though we walk through the 
valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil ; 
for God is with us. His rod and His staff they com- 
fort us." The living and the dying share equally 
in the discrimination of His mercy. To the weak- 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 171 

est shall come the most strength, to the rashest 
the most control, to the neediest the most pro- 
vision, and to the guiltiest the freest and most 
abundant pardon. 

Now you see that Christ takes an interest in 
each of his disciples, even down to the most un- 
worthy. Take our churches, and examine them in 
their individual membership. In them, as among 
the t-^^lve, all shades of temper and degrees of 
consecration are represented. Here is a man who 
adorns his profession, and here another who barely 
escapes being a dishonor to Christ Here a wo- 
man who, in the love of her children and the com- 
forts of her home, finds all the security that earth 
affords, and the lively stimulus of a healthy pride. 
By her side, perhaps, sits another, torn we know 
not by what internal tumult wrought up day by 
day to an unnatural and ruinous excitement, and 
whirled around the circle of fashion so rapidly 
that more than once she has become dizzy, and 
spiritually lost her balance, and to-night she feels 
that she is in danger of repeating that fall. 

Now there is, as I suspect, a feeling in our 
churches which leads men to overlook one of Christ's 
most lovely and beautiful characteristics. I refer 
to His solicitude for the wandering sheep of Plis 
fold. The feeling I have alluded to is this, — it is 
difficult to express it with precision in Avords, but 
I think I can give you my idea, — the feeling, I say. 



172 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

is this, that the consistent Christians monopolize, 
as it were, the attention and favor of Christ, to the 
exclusion of the delinquents. It is not regarded 
as credible that backsliders — the cold, the sluggish, 
and the dissolute — are recipients of His favor. 
His pride and joy in the ninety and nine orderly, 
safely housed, and well-behaved sheep, and not his 
anxiety for the wild, foolish, lost one, are for the 
most part the theme of thought and remark'. And 
this unscriptural and complacent sentiment grows 
and grows, until a division line is drawn between 
the main body of the membership and the back- 
slider as sharp, as cruelly defined, and as difficult 
to pass, as if the poor man or woman had actually 
been excommunicated. 

Now this is all wrong, and yet the mental re- 
volt which many of you may detect in your minds 
against what I am saying is the best of all gauges 
to show you how deeply rooted this idea has grown 
to be in the average judgment of the church. 
The Johns who repose on His bosom, and not the 
poor, hot-headed Peters, who stand stamping and 
swearing in the market-places, are the ones we 
deem the objects of His pity. 

The practical evils which come from this idea 
are these, — it encourages spiritual pride and phari- 
saical complacency on the part of the majority of 
the church ; it also substitutes another sentiment 
than that of love in our own hearts toward our back- 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 173 

sliding brethren ; and, lastly, it serves to plunge the 
delinquents themselves into a certain posture of 
antagonism to the church, and an inward despair 
touching their own ultimate betterment. This is 
the worst of all possible positions a man can get 
into. When the Devil has threaded aU the hope 
out of a man, he has not merely cheated God of 
the first harvest, but has destroyed the very seeds 
from which all future fruitfulness was to come. 
Now, if there is a single man or woman here who 
is in or near the margin of such a state of mind, 
the lesson of this text is for him. He holds to the 
members of his church, more fortunate in temper- 
ament and training, the same relation that Peter 
held to the Twelve, when the words of our text 
were first spoken. He is the object of Christ's 
prayer to-day. My brother, I do not know how 
often or how far you may have fallen. ]S'o one 
save God does know. 1 do not care for that. Never 
shall it be said that ten years of Christian life have 
left me worse than a Pharisee. It is not in my 
heart to cast a stone at you. AVliat have I to do 
with stoning ? Perhaps for twenty years you have 
been unfaithful to your covenant vows, been dere- 
lict in duty, loved money more than Christ, been 
proud and vain, in all the plans and purposes of 
your heart worldly, in your appetites carnal. I do 
not know but that, since you w^ere last in a sanc- 
tuary, you have in act and w^ord denied your Mas- 



174 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

ter, as did Peter, nor can I see upon the border 
of what future denial your feet may even now be 
standing. I only know, my brother and sister, 
that Christ singles out, from all His disciples here, 
you who are most tempted and most liable to 
fall, and, going down to your side, as you sit in this 
hall, and fixing His eyes in love upon you, says, " I 
have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not " ; and 
all I ask of you is that you shall remember. this, 
and go out from this place to-night girded and 
braced with the thought that Christ has not cast 
you off because of your sins, and turned you adrift, 
but that he sees all your weakness and liability to 
fall, and has singled you out from us all, not in 
anger, not to reject and thrust you away, but to as- 
sist and put his arms of loving restraint around 
you, and will so continue to do to your dying day. 
The words of Paul are true, — as true now as ever, 
as true to the modern church as to the church 
at Eome; and you should all be persuaded that 
neither life nor death, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor anything that can happen to 
you, can separate you from God's love. 

This is the anchor, the hope, to which I ask 
you to weld your faith. So rivet yourself to it 
to-night that when the next gale bears down upon 
you you will not be driven out of the harbor of 
your refuge, out of your confidence in Christ's re- 
deeming blood, to be tossed and buffeted amid 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 175 

conflicting doubts and fears, but be held stoutly 
to your trust, as a ship is held to its anchorage 
when the anchor is struck into the cleft of a riven 
rock. There is not ahead of you a hand's-breadth 
of sky -which is not of crimson, typical of a fair 
to-morrow, so long as in your heart lives a single 
regret for sin, and a deep, warm desire to be 
better; and out of that tinted, roseate sky come 
words of encouragement, and signs of promise, and 
unspoken messages, and ministrations of love and 
hope. And not only so, but that sky deepens and 
brightens its hue as it slopes dowuAvard ; and at 
death, when Satan sliall gather all his terrors, God 
will gather all His consolations, and that hour 
"which so many paint with blackness shall be as 
radiant to the believer as golden mist. And all 
this I urge you to believe, not with wishing and a 
vague hope, but with the firm assurance of faith. 

I would now call your attention to the last 
clause of the text, " When thou art converted, 
strengthen thy brethren." ' 

Now if there is any class of men from whom 
the church popularly does not expect strength, it 
is pre-eminently from that class known as " back- 
sliders." If the mercy of God was like the charity 
of men, who of us would find for<?iveness ? If a 
professing Christian trips and falls, although it be 
far less in extent than the lapse of Peter, it is all 
over with him, so far as popular estimation goes. 



176 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

No matter how useful he may have been. He may- 
have preached the gospel, and labored with good 
results, for twenty years, but if caught off his guard 
for a moment, he is overpowered by the Adver- 
sary, and falls, — farewell to his usefulness. " You 
strengthen the brethren, indeed ! Has it not been 
proved that you were intoxicated, that you were 
picked up drunk in the street, and lost your church 
by it ? You are a likely person to preach righteous- 
ness and temperance and judgment to come !" Or 
again : " Yoic exhort or pray again in public ! Did 
you not forge a check, were you not tried for it, and 
barely escaped the prison, and did not your church 
excommunicate you for it ? I would like to know 
what good your words and prayers would do ! " 

My friends, that is the way that the world, and 
the church, too, talks about men who have fallen ; 
but it is a wretchedly sad way of talking, after all. 
If Peter had been a modern Christian, very slight 
chance indeed would have been his after that ex- 
hibition of himself in the court-yard. And yet 
there was a vast deal of noble, self-denying, soul- 
saving work in Peter after his terrible lapse from 
his Master, as you all know ; for the Scriptures 
bear witness to it, and heaven is full of the testi- 
mony and praise of it to-night. And this Christ 
saw, for He laid a solemn charge upon him in these 
words, " When thou art converted, strengthen thy 
brethren." In saying this the Saviour enunciated 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 177 

one of the greatest principles known to the student 
of moral forces. The principle is this, — that all 
ins'truction and warning in spiritual matters must 
be based on knowledge and experience. 

If I had a stretch of rapids to run, and could 
select from a dozen guides, I would choose that 
one who, when he last went down that terrible 
reach of water, at the point of the wildest whirl 
and loudest roar had his canoe twisted from the 
pressure of his paddle, sucked from under him, 
and crushed to fragments on the rocky bottom. 
And the reason would be, that he who once barely 
escaped death, when next he neared that point 
would* approach with his senses all alert, and 
know to the width of an inch where to steer, and 
drive his flying shell straight to the proper point. 
And so it is on that other river which we call life, 
and along those portions of it where the current 
is swift and full of eddies, the decline steep, and 
the suction strong. He who has passed down 
such a passage, and been morally near wreck, is 
the man to caution and strengthen me for the dan- 
ger. No one can talk to young men, for 'instance, 
concerning the woe of drunkenness like the re- 
formed drunkard. Who can tell you of the horror 
of fire as he who comes stao-gerinf]j out of a burn- 
ing building with his hands blistered, his hair 
burnt to the scalp, and the skin of his face puffed 
and white with the inflammation of the lieat and 



178 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

steam ? When that man talks about the torment 
of fire, you look at his face and see that he knows 
what fire is. Why, I might stand and advocate 
temperance, and you would listen respectfully, as 
becomes you, and that would be all. My words 
would make no great impression, start no new 
conviction, nor move any such emotion of pity or 
fear as you are capable of feeling. But let me 
bring a man here and place him before you who 
has been a drunkard, a city sot for ten years, and 
yet whom many of you would remember as an ac- 
tive and prosperous business-man fifteen years ago, 
a kind husband, a good citizen, and an upright 
gentleman. If I could bring such a man h'ere, I 
say, and place him before you just as I found him 
in the street, ill clothed, tremulous and weak, 
w^ould you not listen ? As you saw his pale, hag- 
gard countenance, seamed and marred with the 
traces of debauch, — his eyes, out of which hun- 
ger and despair looked, — the shaking of his hand 
as he stretched it out toward you, — the broken- 
down condition of the wdiole man, — and out of 
his quivering lips heard the words: "I had a 
happy wife once, but my cruelty killed her. I 
had wealth, as some of you know, but rum took 
it from me. I had a home in that long-gone day, 
but the sheriff sold it over my head. I had hope 
once, both as to this w^orld and the w^orld to come, 
but the light of it has faded, for my days are pass- 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 179 

ing in disgrace, and I know that no drunkard 
can inherit the kingdom of heaven!" and then 
heard him declare the truth extorted from him by 
his agony, "The wine-cup has done all this for 
me : beware of the wine-cup ! " would you not be 
moved, seeing this man, hearing his words of warn- 
ing ? Would not the virtue of these young men be 
strengthened against the accursed drinking cus- 
toms of the day ? Well, this law holds good to a 
greater or less extent through all grades of experi- 
ence, and none might be so useful to society and 
the church as those who have fallen, and by their 
falling gained the right and power to address 
intelligent counsel and w^arning to others. 

God lays a mission, therefore, on all of you who 
by sad experience know the weakness of your own 
natures, and the readiness of God to forgive. It is 
to you who are wise with the knowledge of your 
weakness that I speak ; to you who are in that 
unfortunate condition of mind in which a profes- 
sor thinks that his past unfaithfulness cuts him 
off from any future attempts of usefulness, that I 
address the exhortation of the text. I know not 
w^here you worship. I do not know even your 
name. My arrow is drawn at a venture, winged 
only by the Spirit of God. But this makes no 
difference with my feelings or with our relations. 
For to-night, at least, I am your pastor ; for to-night 
I am the voice of God to vour soul. Hear me as 



180 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

such. Let your past be as a wild and frightful dream 
that comes in the night and torments us with its 
visions of terror, but departs with the rising of the 
sun. Forget your past. Your repentance has cov- 
ered and changed it. Behold ! see for yourselves ! 
its scarlet has become like wool, and its crimson 
white as snow ! Do not think that you are counted 
out of the moral influences of your church by its 
pastor ? If he be a true under-shepherd of Christ, 
he lays on you the injunction that was laid upon 
Peter. There is not a summation he makes of the 
powers and forces to be organized in the future for 
Christ and man in which you, your wealth, your 
time, your friendship, your influence, your example, 
are not counted. So far as your past has been 
wasted you are to remedy it, and so live hereafter 
as to strengthen the brethren. 

Why, see the philosophy of this thing. Suppose 
fifty men, who had lapsed from the perfect fulfilment 
of their covenant duties, and have been adding little 
to the moral forces of their respective localities, 
should say, not all at once perhaps, not in so many 
words, but in heart and act, " I have not been doing 
my duty to the church, no, nor to my own soul 
either, and I will change my course, rectify my 
example, and henceforth, God helping me, will be 
faithful to my pledge," — would not that strengthen 
the brethren ? Who can estimate the power of 
such a stand, the addition which such a confes- 



HOPE FOR THE FALLEN. 181 

sion and reconsecration would bring to the spirit- 
ual forces there ? And the farther the man had 
wandered, the more marked his failure in the past, 
the more noticeable and influential for good would 
be liis return to duty. 

Keturn, then, return, all ye who have wandered ! 
Come back, ye prodigals, smitten with spiritual 
famine, to your Father's love and home ! Let your 
clerks, let your servants, let your children, let your 
pastor, see the blessed change in your conduct. 
Behold ! into this audience the Spirit is now en- 
tering. He comes as thfe wind to the orchard when 
about to bloom. What memories of former activ- 
ity, what resolutions for usefulness, what hopes of 
future labors, sweeter than the perfume of flowers, 
are stirred as His impulse sways your minds ! 0, 
blow upon us, thou Divine wind ! Come to these 
frozen hearts here, as the warm air of the soutli 
comes to the ice in spring, melting it ! Come to 
these darkened minds, as a breeze comes out of the 
west after a day of storm, sweeping the clouds 
from the firmament, uncovering its majestic vault 
of garnished blue ! Come, as the scented zephyr to 
the lattice of the sick ! Come, as hope comes to 
the lost, as faith to the dying, and as that eternal 
peace which the world knoweth not comes to the 
sainted dead ! Behold, we lift our eyes and hands 
and hearts, and say, " Thou Holy Spirit, come ! " 



182 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEKMON IX. 

THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 

" Preach the Word." — 2 Timothy iv. 2. 

NOTHIN'Gr is more evident than this, — that 
the death of Christ neither wrought any 
change in the feelings of God toward the sinner, 
nor in the feelings of the sinner toward God. 
Whatever the atonement did effect, whatever use 
it served, it certainly did not modify the relative 
status of either. From the beginning God had 
loved man with an infinite love. To that there 
could not come, by any occurrence, addition. From 
the fall of our first parents through all their suc- 
cessive generations, their moral alienation and an- 
tagonism remained, and after Christ had wrought 
out and finished his great work on earth and reas- 
cended into heaven, human nature remained in all 
its old state of lapse and degeneracy. 

From the start there had been two obstacles to 
man's salvation. The first was that which the just 
and holy claim of the transgressed law presented. 
God must ever remain harmonious with Himself. 
He cannot favor one attribute at the expense of 
another. His justice must be satisfied before 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 183 

mercy can be exercised. In the Divine economy 
the death of Christ sufficed to meet the demand 
of the law. It was a perfect satisfaction to jus- 
tice. In its les;al connection it was held as a full 
and ample equivalent of the punishment of the 
sinner. Divine justice "was honored, and without 
discordance to Himself God could allow the senti- 
ment of His mercy exercise. After the death of 
Christ God could justify the unjust, and yet re- 
main just to Himself. Thus the first great obsta- 
cle to man's salvation was removed. But no 
sooner was the first obstacle removed than the 
second presented itself, namely, How might the 
enmity of the human heart to the j)lan of salva- 
tion itself be removed ? The death of Christ 
opened, if I might so express it, a broad, macad- 
amized road along which the feet of men might 
pass, without let or hindrance of justice, heaven- 
ward ; and the cross, planted as a guide and sign 
at the entrance of it, sent out its impressive and 
perpetual exhortation to all to enter, — but none 
would enter. A road, I say, was opened ; a path, 
wide and smooth, rising with easy grade upward, 
lay before the race ; a highway, at infinite cost, 
had been cast up, along w^hich the nations in 
long and happy procession might tread ; when — 
surprising fatuity I — a discoA'ery was made, — 
the nations would not walk in it ! An astonish- 
ing and persistent disinclination to be saved on 



184 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the part of the imperilled, revealed itself. Tha 
avenue remained untraversed by the very ones for 
whose benefit it liad been opened. The possibility 
of freedom had no sooner been proclaimed to those 
in spiritual slavery than it was discovered that, 
instead of appreciating the privilege, instead of 
eagerly availing themselves of the chance of lib- 
erty and restoration, they absolutely preferred 
their bondage. They gazed with unlighted eyes 
at the Cross, which was the sign and seal of the 
government's love and care for them, and heard 
the proclamation of hope and redemption from 
their chains without one emotion of gratitude, and 
even with ignorant and defiant murmurs. What 
was to be done ? Leave them to toil and die in 
this base condition, or educate them up to an ap- 
preciation of their privileges ? You anticipate the 
answer. God never despairs, never halts in His 
merciful undertakings. In the flow of His love lie 
the infinite resources of cleansing. No pollution 
discourages Him. He is to sin what the sun is to 
darkness, — its master by inherent composition 
of forces. The second obstacle in the way of 
men's salvation — their disinclination to be saved 
— did not appall Him. He proceeded at once to 
devise and set in operation means for its removal. 
He commissioned agents, and organized agencies ; 
the object of all their influence was to overcome 
the sinner's disinclination to be saved. In this we 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 185 

find the origin and motive of the ministry of the 
Word. 

By the ministry of the Word I do not, of course, 
mean that part of it alone expressed by the 
preacher, but all those enlightening, convincing, 
and convicting influences which flow from the 
history and revelation of God's dealings with man. 
This book is indeed the source and head of the 
Christian ministry and Christian influence, but it 
does not give full expression to that ministry and 
influence, any more than the spring in the moun- 
tain gives full expression to the river, of which it 
is the beginning and first cause. Consider how 
many books the Bible has given birth to, and 
what a vast influence those books have exerted 
and are now exerting on the human mind. Ee- 
flect, fuithermore, how literature has been cleansed 
and modified by it ; and how the poetic imagina- 
tions of the race, purified from heathenish con- 
ceptions and lewdness, are to-day busily at work 
swelling the aggregate of virtue and refinement. 
Where, indeed, has not the influence of the Word 
penetrated ? AA^iere has not the ministry of it, in 
one form or another, gone ? It has entered into 
literature, and purged it of its indecencies and gross- 
ness. It has directed the chisel of the sculptor, 
and made the marble contribute to its holiest con- 
ceptions. It has mingled the colors on the palette, 
and endowed the canvas with a perpetual power 



186 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

to refine and elevate. It has dictated constitutions 
to governments ; wrenched lesrahzed wrons; out of 
statute, and marshalled the forces of legislation 
in favor of liberty and man. It has even entered 
the seat of customs, made commerce an honor and 
an agent, and joined in close alliance with itself all 
the manifold forces of business and trade. It is 
only when you take into account all these wide- 
branching influences which emanate from the 
Bible, that you can, even to a partial extent, esti- 
mate what it has done and is doins; for the world. 
J^ow the ministry of the Word, which has for its 
object the removal of man's hostility to God, in 
its widest sense, includes all these. By as much 
as you enlighten the race, by as much as you refine 
away its grossness, by as much as you root out its 
vices and extract its antagonisms, by so much do 
you bring it nigher to God. The early rains which 
precede the summer's warmth do no more surely 
prepare the earth for the seed, than do these world- 
wide, humanizing tendencies, which through a 
lengthened pedigree trace their birth from the 
Gospels, prepare the souls of men to accept the 
atonement. There are, I have no doubt, men and 
women in this audience to-night who have been 
thus indirectly operated upon by the Spirit, until 
you stand as orchards do in June when ready to 
break into floral beauty and fragrance as soon as 
the warm southwest shall blow upon them. You 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 187 

are at the A^eiy point of presenting yourselves to 
God with every faculty in full bloom. Through 
a literature which the Gospels have purged and 
made clean, — through home influences, which are 
the gift of the Cross to the nations that embrace 
it, — through the providential dealings of life and 
death, — through manifold methods, your minds 
have been enlightened, your consciences quickened, 
your hearts made tender ; and, to-night, you are as 
the soil when the sower passes over it with the 
seed. God grant that the truth may find lodge- 
ment to-night in those hearts best prepared for 
its coming, for so shall it spring up, blossom, and 
bear fruit after its kind. 

I do not want you who have not as yet recorded 
your love for God to feel that the Sabbath is the only 
time, or the church the only place, or clergymen 
the only men, when, where, and by whom the min- 
istry of the Word is proclaimed. The descent of 
the Spirit is like the distillation of dew, — not con- 
fined to the iiours of one night, but yielded by the 
heavens under the workings of an organic law of 
mercy. Wherever you find discipline for your pas- 
sions, wherever control over your appetites, wher- 
ever food and exercise for vour virtue, wherever 
opportunity for benevolent action, — whenever or 
wherever a sight of beauty or sound of harmony, or 
anything of God or man sweet, pure, and elevating, 
then and there are vou ministered unto out of in- 



188 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

finite mercy. Then and there does God seek to 
take you, as a gardener does a vine which has 
been wrenched away from the trellis, and with 
the tenderest touch and solicitude train you once 
more around the prop and pillar of Divine sup- 
port. There is such a thing as narrowing religion 
and its offices by the way in which you regard 
them. Some look at the ministry as I was wont to 
amuse myself when a boy by looking at objects 
through a glass with the ends reversed ; and the 
result is that they see but one man, — and what a 
small one he often appears to be ! My friends, 
the minister of the Word is not the ministry of it. 
The one may be very small. He is but a man at 
the best ; but the other is vast, full of expansion, — 
a combination of forces powerful and not a few, 
of whose action and energy God himself is the 
motive cause. The minister is a man, with the 
weaknesses, foibles, and imperfections of a man. 
His appearance may not please you, his manners 
and habits of thought and speech may offend you. 
Pique, prejudice, and a superior taste may all 
combine to make you dislike him. But the minis- 
try of the Word, who can dislike that ? What taste 
can criticise sunlight ? What refinement take of- 
fence at the solar warmth ? The sense of smell 
might as soon cry out against fragrance as man's 
soul revolt at the sweet ministries of God's love. 
Now I feel that I am speaking to men who know 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 189 

much of life, to men whose work it is to build 
dams in swift currents, whose very business puts 
them under daily pressure and temptation ; and I 
wish you all to feel that the ministry of God's 
Word comes to you through many channels beside 
my voice. The anchor of your hope, friends, is 
not cast within any church, but within the veil, 
which is the presence of God ; and your daily words 
and acts strengthen or sever the strands of which 
the cable that connects you therewith is woven. 
God ministers to you in ways manifold, and meth- 
ods not a few, — in the crash of your overthrown 
fortunes cloven by an unexpected bolt ; in the 
wTeck of your worldly plans and hopes ; in the 
family altar, or the mournful absence of it ; in the 
habit of caution and prudence which your dealings 
with men have taught you ; in the dying and bury- 
ing you behold ; in the privileges of liberty, and 
the powers and pleasures of knowledge that you 
enjoy. All these are but the methods of His min- 
istry to you. These are the electrified wires along 
which His messages of warning and direction 
come. These are His angels, commissioned of His 
mercy, and whose mouths are full of entreaties 
higher and more impressive than man's. Xo ! My 
voice is but for a moment. It sounds, and the 
sound of it passes away forever. The moment 
that you pass from these doors to-night you plunge 
again into a current, — the current of worldly life 



190 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and business, the current of temptation to cheat 
and deceive, and put a price upon your virtue. 
And I know well that in the roar of that stream 
my words will be lost, and the sound of their warn- 
ing be drowned. Yea, and if God shall not then 
minister to you in some other way, and brace you 
up, you will be spun from off your feet and swept 
down stream. But God's love is like the sun, and 
it rays its warmth and light along many lines, and 
its illumination is everywhere. You cannot escape 
from it any of you. It will be with you in the 
week to come, yea, and through all the weeks of 
your lives ; and they will be sweetened by the 
ministries of it, as meadows are sweetened by the 
fragrance of many flowers, seen and unseen, — now 
a breath rising at your very feet, and anon another 
and a sweeter blown to you from afar. 

Now I would that you all might feel this, be- 
cause it is truth, and also might recognize with 
most devout gratitude to-night the source of it. All 
those ministrations calculated to soften, refine, and 
lift you come from God through Christ. Every 
drop in this broad river on which the world, and 
especially this nation, floats like a richly freighted 
ship, has come down to us from Calvary. Over 
the very fountain-head of all these outflowing in- 
fluences the Cross stands, and will stand forever as 
the symbol and sign. And it is because of the 
love of God to us that our feet stand in such high 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 191 

and privileged places to-day, where we overlook 
such an auspicious future. 

Now it is possible that some of you have fallen, 
for it is natural for men and women to trip. You 
stand to-day like those who have entered many 
races, but never have won in any, — discouraged, 
spiritless, or in a kind of sullen despair. Now I 
wish all of you who are in any sense in such a 
condition of mind to cheer up and enter once more. 
Make one more attempt. Nerve yourselves for a 
vigorous effort. The eyes of the brave look forever 
into azure, the eyes of the coward forever into 
blackness. If I could sino-le out that one who has 

o 

made a greater failure of his life than the majority of 
us, whose future morally is black, who has reached 
that low^est state in which a man can stand, — when 
temptation has only to present itself and he in- 
stantly yields to it, — who is regarded mth sorrow 
and displeasure by the. church, and with suspicion or 
contempt by the world, I would go to him and say, 
" My good fellow, cheer up. There is a chance in 
your future yet." Why, I went down to the scene 
of a conflagration one day, — marked by a heap of 
ruins from which smoke and steam were still issu- 
ing. What a power there is in fire ! No wonder that 
it is used in Scripture as a symbol of hell. What 
terror there is in the rush and roar of it ! What 
suggestions of stifling, as it whirls a blast of hot 
air into your face ! What a parent of ed dyings 



192 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and whirlwinds its fierce heat is ! How it sucks 
and roars and flares and shoots its columns of red 
flame upward, as the current which itself has cre- 
ated draws through it I For terror and power and 
suggestions of peril, which make men spring from 
their beds, and women shriek, and children scream, 
what can compare with fire ? Well, this terrible 
agent had been at work at that warehouse ; it had 
beaten down the roofs, and pushed over the walls, 
and dashed down its supports, and broken all its 
massive braces, and left literally nothing but 
masses of bent and half-molten iron, the foundation- 
stones, and the bare earth on which tliey rested." 
There never Avas a more complete rain, never a 
more total overthrow. Twelve months after I stood 
on that corner again. I looked about me bewil- 
dered. I crossed the street, and gazed wonderingly 
upward. Could I believe the evidence of my 
senses ? The ruins had disappeared, every trace 
of fire was gone, and a massive structure of granite 
and iron towered nigh to a hundred feet above my 
head ; and the spacious compartments resounded 
with the whir of wheels, the creaking of pulleys, 
and the shouting of men trundling bales and strain- 
ing at the elevators. And T said to myself : " Man 
is indomitable. No failure discourages, no wreck 
appalls bim. From the ashes of his old the crea- 
tion of his new conceptions arise, and the failure 
of yesterday gives birth to the triumph of to-day." 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 193 

But do you think, good friends, that material 
ruins are the only ones men can rebuild ? Is the 
destruction of warehouses and mansions the sole 
destruction he can remedy ? Are the prostrated 
columns of trade the only ones he can re-raise and 
establish ? I tell you nay ; the same resolution, 
the same energy, the same hopefulness and effort, 
carried into the sphere of moral disaster and 
T\Teck, will accomplish even more glorious results. 
I care not what or how much has been over- 
thrown. Honesty, virtue, sobriety, — all may 
have gone down, but so long as the foundation, 
Avhich is life, is left, so long is there hope and op- 
portunity. So I say to you all, no matter wdiat 
may have been your failure, nor how total your 
overthrow, — no matter, spiritually, where you 
stand to-day, nor how black and ugly is the face 
of the past as it scowls at you through your recol- 
lections, — you are not lost, you are not undone, 
you need not despair. You have only to clear 
away the rubbish from the foundation, and begin 
again. In this endeavor you will not work alone. 
There is not a twig on a tree which seeks growth, 
there is not a flow^er in the field that craves fra- 
grance, unassisted of God. But are you not of 
more value in His sio-ht than flowers and trees ? 
Does the sun withhold its rays from a bruised 
violet which a thoughtless foot has cruslied ? Do 
the clouds refuse to condense themselves above 

9 M 



194 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the parched ground, and empty from their dis- 
tended borders the moisture of the shower ? Does 
not the solar beam slant an equal ray upon the 
mud of your streets and the grass of your lawns ? 
And if God is thus mindful through nature to 
minister to the inanimate and the senseless, will 
He be less thoughtful and loving in His provisions 
for you ? Never believe it. You will be minis- 
tered to, you will be fed ; yea, as young birds, blind 
to the mouth that feeds them, so the providence 
of God, moving on noiseless wing, will come laden 
with nourishment, and perch above you, silencing 
your clamors by supply ; and all that is pure and 
noble in you shall be grown and developed under 
the brooding love of God, until at the breaking of 
some bright morning the hour of flight and song 
will come, and you will never have done with 
soarinfy and sinolnoj. 

I have dwelt thus at length on the ministrations 
of the Word as a means to remove man's opposi- 
tion to God, that you might see how nigh in mani- 
fold methods your Heavenly Father comes to you 
in your daily life. I wish all you business-men, 
and all you young men, and all you laborers here, 
to feel that God's truth is not shut up between the 
covers of any book, nor proclaimed by any man or 
class of men alone, but that you may find and 
feel it anywhere and at all times ; that day by day 
it comes knocking at the door of your hearts seek- 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 195 

ing entrance. The influence of the Spirit which 
incKnes us toward Christ is not enclosed in j)ipe- 
like ordinances and formulas, and led into our 
churches as you enclose and lead water into your 
reservoirs. No ! It is, rather, like the water which 
flows in the riA'er, permeating the earth on either 
side with its irricfatiou. It lurks like moisture in 
the atmosphere, and sifts from the heavens like 
dew, or falls on human hearts as the outpoured 
shower upon the thirsty soil in summer. This 
Divine influence is as universal as atmosphere, as 
generic to the moral order and economy of God 
as sunshine is to the material world. Your souls 
are not like birds in a vacuum, which fall plump 
to the bottom of the jar, and lie gasping and 
fluttering, unable to lift themselves. They are, 
rather, as those same birds when in the free outer 
air, under the curvature of whose wings a strong 
current of wind is sweeping, and all they need 
is to poise correctly with easiest inclination this 
way and that, and the movement beneath lifts 
thenj. What a sight it is to see a bird thus sus- 
pended above you, and to watch him as he poises 
with nicest balance, while the invisible but ade- 
quate forces under him push him upward until he 
seems but a tuft of brilliant plumage smitten by 
the sun ! So it is, spiritually, with you all. You 
do not lie gasping in a morally thin and exhausted 
atmosphere. You breathe an air full of the bm- 



196 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

cing element of noble impulses. Underneath you 
are the uplifting influences of God's Spirit, coursing 
steady and strong like the wind. I ask you to- 
night to put yourselves in such a position that 
you can be lifted. I do not address you as profes- 
sors or non-professors, as penitent or hardened. 
I speak as to men and women endowed with rea- 
son, gifted with sensibilities to feel, capable of 
gratitude, able to decide as to what is right and 
just. I place heaven before you in these closing 
words. You can see, if you will but look, the 
streets and walls and gates, and all the outflashing 
glories of it. You know what a force the Cross is 
in the world ; why it was set up, and what for- 
giveness of sin and impulses toward virtue men 
receive from it. I ask why so many of you re- 
ject it. Is there not a tide of conviction setting 
many of you toward it ? I feel it to be so. Do 
not resist, do not struggle against it. Steer directly 
and joyfully toward it, rather, as ships long buffeted 
by storm come flying in from the foam and thun- 
der of the tempest-swept ocean toward the protec- 
tion of the harbor and the* quiet waters of the bay. 
Suppose, my hearers, that this city should yield 
itself, in the action of all its inhabitants, to the 
ministrations of God. Suppose the men who con- 
duct its business, build its houses, swarm its facto- 
ries, people its streets, and direct its energies, 
should in the coming week, by the grace of God, be 



THE MINISTRY OF THE WORD. 197 

converted, and ever after bear the name and live 
the life of Christians. What mind here can ade- 
quately conceive of the blessed change such an 
event would cause ? What absence of vice, what 
peace, what prosperity, what hope, would be ours ! 
And yet such a result would be brought about by 
individual decisions. Though all were converted at 
the same moment, yet each of you would have to 
decide for yourself. Why should it not begin here 
in this room, to-night ? Who of you will be the 
first to decide ? Quick, for the heavens are watch- 
ing ! Whose is the name that goes first into the 
skies ? 

the decisions of this night ! Better by far to 
have stayed away than, having come, to decide 
wrongly ! If, as it is said, the fall of a pebble shakes 
the earth to its centre, how heaven vibrates with the 
thoughts you are thinking now ! To think and not 
to conclude ; to conclude only to decide amiss ; to 
add one more grief to the sorrows of the Spirit, 
one more rejection to the many you have already 
given to Christ, one more insult to God ; to do this, 
moreover, on the Sabbath evening, God's own day, 
set apart by Him for your especial benefit, bring- 
ing to you such an opportunity, being, as it may 
be, your last on earth — ah, who can bear the 
thought ? 

Enough has been spoken, — too much if it be 
in vain. I turn from the shadow to the sunshine, 



198 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

from tlie clouds and fogs of tlie present to the pure 
azure of the future. The banners under which I 
ask you to serve to-night will yet be blazoned with 
victory. They will shake out their glory over the 
heads of those whose feet will enter heaven as the 
feet of those who are more than conquerors. De- 
cide as you may, God's purposes will not change. 
Whether you contend or assist, His cause will move 
on with the motion of a chariot when a king drives 
it to victory. Over thrones and proud empires the 
Nazarene has walked, on shield and pennon his feet 
have trodden ; and to-day, amid the kingdoms of 
the earth, He marches on, the centre of agencies 
more destructive than cannon, more terrible than 
an army with banners. Think you that the cause 
of which Christ is the leader will fail of com- 
plete vindication ? Will the influences of which 
He is parent, which have braved successfully all 
manner of opposition for so many centuries, which 
have levelled so many palaces, overturned so many 
thrones, broken so many fetters, enlightened so 
many minds, ever die ? It cannot be. We shall 
go to our graves, fellow-Christians, but we shall go 
as warriors have gone who lived long enough to 
know that their bravery was not in vain. We 
shall sleep, not as those who have no hope, but 
as they who hear far down the future the smit- 
ing of victorious shields and the shoutings of a 
great multitude. Amid the tumult and commo- 



THE MmiSTRY OF THE WORD. 199 

tions of tlie earth, amid the roar of all battles, the 
Christian hears but one voice, publishing itself 
with the sustained clearness of a bugle, saying 
only this, but saying it forever, " Behold, I make 
all things new." And God who is over all shall 
minister unto all, until this Divine assurance shall 
have been fulfilled. 

I invoke the Spirit of Christianity. From her 
birthplace in the East, with the flush of the Ori- 
ent yet kindling on her brow, I summon her to 
the AVest. I invoke her presence in your hearts, in 
your homes, throughout all your streets. Under her 
inspiration may you live, and by the winged mer- 
cies of it be at last lifted into the skies. For so 
will it come about that you will die easily when 
you come to die, and put your arms around the 
pillars of Death, not with fear and shrinking, but 
as those who find that they have arrived at a 
happy opportunity. 



200 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SERMON X. 

THE CHURCH,— ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 

" And so were the churches established in the faith, and in- 
creased in number daily." — Acts xvi. 5. 

THE subject I propose to discuss before you 
tbis evening is this, — The Christian Church, 
its Object and Capacity. My more immediate de- 
sire is to examine into the status of the Church 
as it now exists, and the character of public senti- 
ment toward it. 

The Church, in its universal application, signi- 
fies the aggregate body of believers in Christ, — 
faith in Christ, as a Redeemer from sin, being the 
distinctive characteristic of those who compose it ; 
and all who believe in Christ as the Saviour, 
whatever may be their views touching interpre- 
tation and minor doctrines, are its members. This 
is the general meaning of the term. 

In a local sense, a church is composed of any 
number of Christian believers who, from feelings 
of duty to God, each other, and the world, have 
consociated for mutual profit, and that they may 
the better advance the kingdom of God. The 
Church, originated in Christ as the Pastor, and 
the twelve disciples as the original membets. It 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 201 

was continued and multiplied by apostolic autlior- 
ity and labors, and has been constantly identified 
with all that concerns the advancement of God's 
spiritual kingdom. 

It should also be observed that the conviction 
of all Christians, up to a very recent date, has 
from age to age most positively reaffirmed the 
Divine origin and sufficiency of the Church. The 
current of Christian sentiment has set, I say, with 
an uninterrupted flow in this direction, — that in 
the local churches, in the powers and functions, 
the agents and agencies, they represented, the 
world recognized an institution not merely begun 
in Christ, but all-sufficient to accomplish, so far as 
human instrumentalities can, the work of Christ 
on the earth. This, I repeat, has been, up to a recent 
period, beyond question the universal sentiment 
of Christians. The great impulse given to mis- 
sionary effort, near the beginning of this century, 
which resulted in the establishment of the For- 
eign Board and Home Missionary societies, had 
as its prime cause this idea, — that Christ held 
His Church responsible for the conversion of the 
world. And it is this thought, ever present in the 
bosom of the local churches, which to-day holds 
them steadily up to the line of consecrated en- 
deavor. This I regard a fair statement. 

Now there are two opinions, growing apace, hos- 
tile to this view of the Church. Neither is as yet 

9* 



202 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

fully developed; one not sufficiently confident to 
express itself in words. But unless one of these 
opinions is checked and the other corrected, we 
shall soon see them both in the field w open and 
undisguised opposition to the Church. What at 
present is only whispered in the ear will be pro- 
claimed from the housetops, and an embarrassing 
and grievous schism will occur, the result of which 
no one can foresee. I will here present more fully 
both of these opinions, hostile as they are to the 
scriptural and hitherto universally accepted view of 
the uses and objects of the Church, — show whence 
in part they arise, what is their tendency, and how 
to render them powerless for harm. 

The first opinion is this : That the Church, al- 
though originally an excellent institution, and one 
which in time past has served moral interests, is 
now outgrown and left behind by the progress of 
events, and through the operation of its own past 
benevolent action has become useless and effete. 

They who hold to this opinion are men and 
women of sceptical and so-called liberal tenden- 
cies of mind, — people of radical and erratic tem- 
peraments, who by nature are inclined to reject 
and override whatever offers the least restraint to 
their latest-formed opinion or speculation. Many 
of this class have been checked and balked in 
what, it must be confessed, were most noble en- 
deavors for human advancement, by the slow and 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 203 

cautious movements of the Cliurcli, or perhaps 
still more by its direct and persistent oj)position ; 
and they have naturally, looking at it from their 
point of view, jumped to the conclusion that the 
Church is a cumbrous and nninspired organiza- 
tion, ^yhich has no sympatliy with human wants, 
and is opposed to all needed change ; and which, 
through its laws, ordinances, and ceremonies, and 
above all through its vast hold on human credulity 
and unintelligent reverence, blocks np by an unre- 
quired machinery the path of just and salutary re- 
form. They instance the attitude of the churches 
toward the antislavery cause in the early stages of 
its history, their present lethargy touching the tem- 
perance movement, the unwise and unspiritual con- 
duct of the Presbyterian and Episcopal denomina- 
tions in reference to those of their members who are 
most active in labors of love and efforts to give the 
Gospels free scope ; and charge that, practically and 
in point of fact, the Church prevents the accom- 
plishment of the objects for which it was origi- 
nally ordainedt. Furthermore, they inveigh against 
the spirit of caste and exclusiveness which exists 
in the Church, shown chiefly in the construction of 
magnificent palaces of worship for the few, while the 
many have not the Word of God preached to them, 
and charge that even its activities are thus proved 
to be in opposition to the evangelization of the mass- 
es. They also urge that there is in the churches 



204 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

such blind adherence to old forms and customs, 
which every sensible person knows are practically 
of no value in our day, — such timidity and con- 
servatism in its worst sense, — such bigotry and in- 
tolerance manifested in their refusal to receive, any 
to their fellowship who cannot intellectually sub- 
scribe to their covenants and human interpretation 
of Scripture, — such opposition to science, which 
it thereby forces into antagonism to the Bible, ^ — 
that no enlightened, philanthropic, and progressive 
persons can conscientiously belong to them"; and 
hence such must work outside, if at all, of their 
iron-like and ever-contracting circumference. They 
also declare that no latitude, no freedom of thought, 
no liberty of investigation, is allowed the preacher 
or members ; that the fear, nay, the certainty of 
discipline and excommunication with the accom- 
panying loss of reputation and forfeiture of confi- 
dence and support, is held over their heads, and 
hence no reform can ever come to existing evils, 
because the very sources of reform — free dis- 
cussion and investigation — are things denied. I 
might instance other charges ; but these, in sub- 
stance, make up the grave indictment against the 
Church as an institution. 

Here, then, is a charge, held, made, and discussed 
openly and by many. Some of the cleverest writ- 
ers of the country are weekly, in one form or an- 
other, reiterating it. Some of the ablest speakers 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 205 

are proclaiming it, now in the form of argument, 
now of satire, now of invective. Some of the best 
men and women of the land — if money given, if 
time devoted, if life consecrated to human good 
are to be admitted as testimony of character — are 
believing it. ibid it is to be feared that numbers 
are tacit disciples of the doctrine, whom timidity, 
interest, or lack of occasion and prominence unite 
to keep silent. 

Now, my friends, you will observe that the 
strength of this charge lies, not in the ability of 
the makers of it, nor in their persistence and 
honesty, although these are powerful elements 
of persuasion in this country, but in the fact 
that there is a certain amount of truth in the 
charge itself. The indictment is strong and to be 
dreaded, I say, because the party against whom it 
is drawn is in a measure guilty. It is true that 
the position of the American churches in relation 
to the antislavery reform, tested either by the 
votes of their presbyteries and consociations, by 
the voice of their pulpits, or the votes of the 
membership, was not in harmony with the spirit 
of the Gospel, or with a correct and humane pub- 
lic opinion. When Mr. Garrison went to the prom- 
inent clergymen of this city, begging that they 
would assume the leadership of a cause to guide 
which he felt himself, young and unknown as he 
was, to be incompetent, and was rebuffed by all, — 



206 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

even the elder Beecher turning him o£f with the 
proverb, '-I have too many irons already in the 
fire^ youiig nian, to attend to it/' he did by that 
act expose the spiritual deadness and unscriptural 
position of the churches. When a Presbyterian 
synod excommunicates one of its most godly and 
energetic members, because he will sing songs 
other than the psalms of David, — good soul-lifting 
Methodist hymns, and those tunes which make the 
Sabbath-school melodies so refreshing, — it gives 
cause for Piety itself to arraign it. When the 
Episcopal Church arrogates to itself to say that 
Mr. Tyng shall not preach Jesus Christ to dying 
men, unless in surplice, and a building conse- 
crated by a bishop's invocation, it puts a weapon 
into every hand hostile to the Church as a divine- 
ly organized and soul-converting institution. It 
makes possible and just the charge, that professed 
followers of the Saviour bar and ban the free and 
benevolent flow of redeeming grace. When any 
church forbids a man of intelligence and veracity, 
who claims to love the Lord Jesus as his Saviour, 
to enter its communion ; shutting his devout and 
hungering soul away from the table of his Lord, 
from the broken bread and symbolic wine, because 
of some intellectual difference of opinion touching 
some minor doctrine, or some little matter of detail 
touching the government of his life, which are sub- 
jects of pastoral conference and instruction, and 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 207 

not evidence of repentance and faith, — it does 
by that act not merely expose itself to the charge 
of intolerance, but offends one of Christ's "little 
ones," and in so doing pains the Saviour Himself. 
Many a professed Christian, also, by the manner 
in which he has treated his spiritual teacher ; by 
an imfriendly watching his public utterances in 
order to detect some doctrinal unsoundness, or to 
catch him in some verbal lapse in what his own 
narrow and ignorant mind had conceived to be 
orthodox ; by dwelling upon and publishing the 
discoveries of his suspiciousness ; by helping thus 
to perpetuate a public opinion opposed to growth 
in knowledge and therefore in grace ; — many a 
professed Christian, I say, has by such conduct 
filled the quiver of satire with the arrows, and 
forged for invective the bolts, at the launching 
forth of which the bosom of the Church has 
been lacerated, and the honor of her enjoyed and 
royal liberty in Christ prostrated. 

No ; the Church is not free from blame in 
these particulars. She has more than once taken 
positions that have made her obnoxious to a just 
censure. She has shared in the world's selfishness 
and cruelty, and set herself against what she after- 
wards acknowledged was of God's own doing ; and 
to-day she is by no means impregnable to a criti- 
cism the severity of which lies in the fact that it 
is just. This is, then, the first source of that dis- 



208 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

trust of and opposition to the Church as an in- 
stitution which one who watches events and the 
tendencies of the times sees is beginning to assert 
itself. 

N'ow, friends, how can this feeling be checked ? 
How can we prevent this sentiment from going on 
and extending itself indefinitely ? How can we 
take those elements out of the atmosphere which, 
if allowed to multiply and combine, will in some 
evil hour descend with the velocity and violence 
of lightning upon the organization that we love, and 
in which we believe the hope of the world lies ? 

Well, I know of but one way. It is this : The 
churches must, henceforth, so act as to make criti- 
cism powerless. " When is criticism powerless ? " 
you inquire. " When it is palpably unjust," I re- 
spond. This every public man in the country 
knows from his own experience. The sentiment 
of fair-play, of equity between man and man, is 
pre-eminent in America. The Anglo-Saxon is the 
only race with which the jury system has ever been 
a success ; where, indeed, it has ever been seriously 
attempted. In no other country are public men 
so fiercely assailed as in this ; in no other are they 
so safe, provided that in the main they are right. 
'No one man, no clique of men, not even a news- 
paper, can lie a man out of usefulness in this 
country. They may pile falsehood upon false- 
hood against him, they may cover him with abuse. 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 209 

they may pervert his words and malign his mo- 
tives, they may task the utmost resource of mis- 
representation to his hurt ; but the American peo- 
ple will hear both sides before they render judg- 
ment. Every public man knows this. It is the 
joy and safeguard of public life. Stanton knew 
it. Lincoln knew it. Beecher leans confidently 
upon that belief to-day. You may pass this as a 
maxim, — no one can be condemned in this country 
on malicious reports, on mere hearsay. Criticism, 
in order to be powerful, to be hurtful in America, 
must be just. In the long run, every man and 
every institution gets its deserts. 

AVell, by this star should the Church be guided. 
We must put the Church in such a position toward 
man in all his needs, toward society in all its 
wants, that adverse criticism will have nothing rea- 
sonable to hurl against it. AYe must so act that 
any but malicious opposition will be impossible, 
and therefore harmless. Our love for man, our 
labors for his best interest, must be so open, so 
self-evident, so like the sky at noonday, that no 
eye can fail to see and rejoice at it ; so that even 
the blind shall bless the warmth of that beneficent 
influence the source of which they cannot in their 
blindness behold. The safety of the Church lies 
in progress. It cannot become an intrenched camp. 
You can never so fortify it that the world will not 
storm over its walls, and leave it, as an army leaves 

N 



210 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

an enemy's city, a mass of ruins. The Cliiircli is 
not a walled city, it is a movable column, and its 
safety lies in moving on continually. Those who 
anchor it to one fixed position, who would wall 
it in with formulas and moat it round with 
orders and creeds, are its worst foes. If the 
Church does not lead the race, the race will walk 
over the Church, and go on without it. Human 
advancement will not stop for any institution what- 
ever. If any one should be foolish enough to array 
the Church against science, do you think science 
will stop ? If any against reform, think you re- 
forms will cease ? l^ay, you must annihilate mind 
before you can check the progress of science. You 
must root out sympathy and humane impulse and 
divinely inspired love from the soul, ere man will 
tamely surrender his inalienable right to expand 
and elevate himself and his kind. The prerog- 
ative of immortality will be given up only with 
the soul's consciousness. 

The second source of peril to the Church, the 
second sentiment that is hostile to it, lies, not in 
the opposition of outsiders, but in the scepticism 
of a portion of its membership as to its powers 
and capabilities. 

Like the other, this feeling is in an undeveloped 
state. It is latent, or in its first stage of manifes- 
tation. Many do not suspect its existence, when 
in fact it has already become a part of their con- 



THE CHURCH, —ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 211 

viction. As in the case of insanity, the acts, and 
not the consciousness, of the patient reveal the 
lapse of reason ; so the actions, rather than the sen- 
sation, of many in the Church testify to the lapsed 
state of their views and feelings concerning the 
powers and destiny of the Church. 

The feeling, I say, is evidently growing in the 
Church that the Church is not sufficient in and 
of itself to convert the world; that some other 
organization must be raised up in order to reach 
the mass of men with the saving truth of the Gos- 
pel. Only a few weeks ago a young man, eminent 
in the religious world, expresed to me the conviction 
that the Church was destined to decline and give 
place to other organizations, until, at the coming 
of Christ, there w^ould be no Church. He based 
his belief on the assumption that the Church was 
unable to meet the exigencies of the future. For 
years there has been a growing inclination to w^ork 
outside of the churches, as it is styled ; to build 
up other organizations, and make them indepen- 
dent of the churches. The idea has gone abroad, 
and lacks not advocates in private conversation 
and public conventions, that the churches are not 
adequate to the work ; that they are too unwieldy 
and inelastic to accomplish what the Master re- 
quires to be done ; that they answer the wants of 
a certain upper class of society, are admirable as 
educational institutions, but powerless to reach the 



212 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

masses ; unfitted, for instance, to do the work of 
searching out and assisting young men in our 
cities ; not qualified for the rough, wide-awake, 
hand-to-hand work of converting souls. There 
is not a person of intelligence in this audience 
who does not know that this feeling is abroad and 
being expressed in manifold ways. 

Now I have this to say at the outset : If the 
Cliurch is not sufficient to carry forward the Mas- 
ter's cause, then something must be raised up that 
is. The cause must go on, Cliurch or no Cliurch. 
Souls must be converted, and if the Church is not 
able, is not adapted, to do the work, then must it 
go by the board. No obstruction must be toler- 
ated to men's salvation; no half-and-half insti- 
tution permitted to retard, even for a day, God's 
saving purposes of grace. 

The question, therefore, comes squarely before 
us, — and the more thorough the discussion the 
more satisfactory will be the conclusion that the 
public will reach, — Is the Church, as an organiza- 
tion, able to go ahead and meet the obligations of the 
future, or must it be given up as a converting agent, 
and some other raised up to do the Lord's work ? 
This, when stripped of all merely accidental consid- 
erations, is the real proposition. For to say that the 
Church is to be retained when the accomplishment 
of the great object for which it was organized is to 
be left to other hands borders on the ridiculous. 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 213 

The idea that the Church is in the years ahead 
to be nothing but an educational institution, or a 
convenient agent for administering the sacraments, 
while all the active, soul-saving work is to be done 
outside of it, — all the zealous, consecrated workers 
to be beyond its direction and control, — is an 
idea which has in it, should it ever gain popular 
ascendency, force enough to destroy the Church 
and wipe it out entirely. 

My friends, you can regard this as certain, — the 
Church can never exist disconnected with active, 
aggressive conversion work. It was never formed 
for a mere educational and sacramental institu- 
tion, and can never continue as such. There can 
be no such thing as a church outside of a member- 
ship ; and when the active, working men and women 
who compose the Church, and make it a vital and 
vitalizing power, array themselves under other ban- 
ners and names, the Church w411 cease to exist as a 
body or become paralyzed in influence. Its mem- 
bership is to it what the breath is to the nostrils, 
and with the breath life departs. So then it is safe 
to say, that if the Church is not to live as a con- 
verting power and agent, it cannot live at all. 

I call your attention, furthermore, to the thought, 
that the real force of this query, — what makes it 
dangerous to the Church, — is to be found in the 
fact that it is raised in the Church itself. It is 
not an assault from without ; it is a revolt (I use 



214 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

the word in a modified sense) from within. The 
query has been started in the very circle of Christ's 
disciples. It is a hesitation, a wavering, a losing 
of heart, a desertion amid His own followers, and 
those followers, too, upon whom He has most 
relied. The divergence, amounting in some locali- 
ties almost to a schism, is, I say, within the 
Church itself, and the fair structure of her spiritual 
unity is liable to be rent asunder. There are cer- 
tain phrases and expressions uttered in conven- 
tions, and going the round of the press, that serve 
to gauge the extent of this sentiment. 

ISTow, friends, bear in mind that words are sym- 
bols of ideas. They hold the same relation to 
our feelings as letters do to thought. As clouds 
reveal to the eye the motion of invisible atmos- 
pheric currents, so words show the drift and direc- 
tion of otherwise undiscovered opinions. Words 
are teachers also. They educate a people. They 
are to ideas what colporteurs are to tracts, — they 
disseminate them from house to house. Words 
are missionaries of the brain; tireless servants 
they are, that voyage over all seas, climb all 
mountains, penetrate the deepest valleys, drawn as 
by an irresistible attraction wherever there is an 
eye to see, an ear to hear, or a brain to understand. 
Launch a word out upon the air, charged with the 
propelling energy of an idea, and who shall set 
limits to its flight ? who tell where it will stop ? 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 215 

The world of mind will never let such a word 
perish. Its pilgrimage is endless, and it will trav- 
erse the entire realm of thought and impulse. 
Like the wandering Jew, its footprints will be 
found on the shore where the equatorial ocean 
rolls its heated waves upon the hotter sands ; in 
the snows of the far north the traveller will see 
them by the polar light, and where, as the ancients 
held, the sun cools the flaming wheels of his char- 
iot in the western tide, — wherever man is, there 
will that word be, impressing men's minds, shaping 
their opinions, and serving the cause which sent it 
out commissioned as its herald. What men say is 
an index of what men think, and he who would 
know what public opinion will be to-morrow must 
note carefully the public utterances of to-day. 

The phrases to which I allude, and which I use 
to show the drift of opinion as represented by 
some men, are these and the like. They say, in 
speaking of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tions, for instance, "They help the churches," 
" They have done so or so for the churches," 
" They are in close sympathy and alliance with 
the churches." What would you think of a man 
who should talk about the Sabbath school "help- 
ing the church," or the Mission school as having 
done this or that for the church, or the prayer- 
meeting as being in "close alliance" with the 
church ? Why, the Sabbath school is the church 



216 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

as truly as the preaching service. The Mission 
school and the prayer-meeting are the church. 
These are not outside, independent organizations 
any more than the ministry is an outside, inde- 
pendent organization. They are no more separate 
from the Church than apples are from the tree on 
whose branches they hang. From bulbous to 
ripened state the Church fed them, and all the 
life, all the vitality, all the sweetness they have 
is derived from the blood and breast of their 
grand old nursing Mother. The foot has as good 
a right to separate itself from the limb, or the 
limbs from the body, and call themselves inde- 
pendent organizations, and talk patronizingly of 
the trunk, as the several co-ordinate branches of 
the Church have to separate themselves from her, 
and start off into independency. They are all 
members of one body, of which Christ is the 
regnant Head. So long as they remain in Christ 
they are indivisible. They compose one organic 
unity. The clasp of an indissoluble union is 
around them. He who holds and teaches any 
other doctrine opens wide the door of possible 
difference, antagonism, and feud. 

Now, if you search for the origin of this senti- 
ment, of this douhfc and scepticism touching the 
Church, its powers and capacity, you find that it 
is a stream that has two sources, — one of which 
is the lethargy of the Church. The Church, as an 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 217 

organization, failed to meet the requirements of 
the age, failed to improve the openings of Divine 
providence, failed to supply the more active por- 
tion of her membership with work. Active, be- 
nevolent natures tire of forms and ceremonies ; 
their souls instinctively reject such dry husks, and 
clamor for richer food. They cannot be content 
with a dull, insipid routine of experience ; they 
cannot see men lost without making an effort to 
save them. The churches, partly from egotism, 
partly from timidity, failed to change their admin- 
istration so as to meet the wants of the times, — 
failed to enlarge the sphere of their acti\dties, failed 
to bestir themselves for the salvation of the multi- 
tudes. The result was, that the zealous portion of 
their membership, especially the younger, finding 
no opportunity to work inside the churches, feeling 
itself repressed, fettered, intimidated, broke away 
from their direction and control, and struck out for 
themselves. If they could not work in the Church, 
they would work out of it, — for work they must. 
The long-repressed, accumulating, pent-up water, 
finding no sufficient outlet through the ecclesias- 
tical flume, broke over and swept away the tradi- 
tional dam, and flowed whithersoever it would. 
This current of heaven-inspired impulse, which 
should have been utilized in the churches, was 
gathered into another organization, and the Young 
Men's Christian Association was the result. Un- 

10 



218 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

employed in the churches, the young men naturally 
jumped to the conclusion that the churches could 
not furnish them work, and this is now, I fear, 
fast ripening into the conviction that God never 
intended that they should. Hence the expression, 
" We help the churches," " We are in close alliance 
with the churches," — which phrases mark as clearly 
as words can, not a lack of love for the churches 
(the movement has not reached that stage yet), 
but a scepticism as to the capacity of the Church, 
as an organization, to furnish employment to its 
members, and a practical divorcement and sepa- 
ration from it. That is one of the two causes 
alluded to. 

Another cause is to be joined to this ; the min- 
gling of the two, — what may be termed the du- 
plex cause, — makes the problem intricate. 

It is, as you know, in the nature of every 
organization to enlarge, solidify, and protect it- 
self, and the more successful an organization the 
stronger does this tendency become, until at last 
it grows to be the prime incentive, the controlling 
impulse, and what was accidental and looked up- 
on as a temporary expedient becomes confirmed 
an(i takes the position of permanency. Personal 
energy, not entirely free from a questionable am- 
bition, assumption of superior excellence, and a 
sensitiveness quick to resent friendly suggestion as 
a hostile criticism, — these and other elements of 



THE CHURCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 219 

power go to swell the total of tlie tendency in 
question. This is the law. A hundred illustra- 
tions from history might be brought to prove it. 
Indeed, the best possible illustration is being day 
by day given in our midst ; and many who little 
think it, will at no remote period, unless wisdom 
prevails, be called upon to decide whether the 
Church of Christ or another organization — an or- 
ganization which at its inception was designed to 
be no more separate, no more independent of the 
Church than the Sabbath school or prayer-meeting 
- — shall receive their presence and their labors. 
For when the churches shall lift themselves, as 
they are sure to do, to an acknowledgement of the 
wants of the age, and their manifest duty ; when 
they shall reeve in all their sails, and spread them 
to catch the rising breeze of opportunity ; when 
every hand and every eye is needed to work the 
ship, then will a voice go forth calling the wander- 
ing crews aboard ; then must the gayly painted 
and newly launched yachts be left, that the ships 
of God may sail full manned whither the one sure 
Pilot may direct and the wind-like Spirit waft 
them. 

I have thus, friends, frankly discussed before 
you the two sentiments that are hostile to the 
Church, — shown you the origin of each, and how 
you can make both powerless for harm. For one, 
I regard the Church as above all human institu- 



220 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

tions. Its history is unique and sublime. Hav- 
ing for its foundation tlie words and deeds, the 
life and death, of the One Man, it has stood the 
shocks of time without being overthrown. Its 
walls are not of granite, yet have they stood 
when granite has crumbled. Marble and porphyry 
and bronze have yielded to time, but the passage of 
years has served only to confirm and strengthen the 
organization of God. Upon the Church the Ad- 
versary has tried his every art, and exhausted his 
utmost fury. The fagot and rack, exile and death, 
have all been used, time and again, to break 
the cordon of believing hearts united by faith in 
Christ ; but no assault of fire or sword has severed 
it. Without her ministrations the Word of God' 
would have been an unread, and unknown book. 
In her have been generated and grown those be- 
nevolent energies which have elevated and blessed 
mankind, and which to-day, with tireless zeal, are 
carrying the Gospel to every desert tribe and the 
savage islands of the seas. She needs no eulogy 
from any. I borrow out of God's free air no breath, 
I marshal no words of stirring speech, to sound her 
praise. Her wreath is woven, and well woven too, 
both flower and leaf Let no one tell me of an- 
other organization that is to supplant the Church 
of the Most Hiojh. Let no one tell me that her 
. arm is shortened or her knees weak. Say not that 
there is, or can ever be, an altar like hers, moist- 



THE CHUKCH, — ITS OBJECT AND CAPACITY. 221 

ened as it is with the blood of her martyrs, and 
smoking as it does with the incense of her praise. 
Others may seek new houses and strange temples, 
but the house of the Lord, the sanctuary of the 
Most High, shall be my spiritual home. I am 
content with the glory of the Chnrch, I am satis- 
fied with her praise ; for the beams of her house 
are of cedar, and her rafters of fir. 



222 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 



SEEMON" XI. 

THE POWER OF CITIES. 

FEOM the earliest period to the present time 
cities have dominated over the world. Into 
them have flowed the resources of national power. 
In their hands have been held the balance of 
empire, and the human mind has ever acknowl- 
edged the sovereignty of their sway. 

Paris is France. That phrase has passed into a 
proverb. In it all that is light and beautiful in 
the French character, all that is wild and violent, 
all that is poetic and refined, all that is gross 
and sensual, is represented. The very gossip of its 
boulevards epitomizes the philosophy of the nation. 
It is the heart of the empire, and every province 
sympathizes with the action of its great centre. 
If Paris is satisfied, the empire is peace; if the 
capital is convulsed, the nation quakes to its re- 
motest boundary. In this wonderful city the 
valor, the culture, the science, the poetry, and re- 
ligion of the Glallic mind are concentrated. More 
than once has the judgment of the nation against 
its kings been expressed in the savage roar of the 
canaille. More than once has French liberty been 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 223 

smothered in the blood of its streets, and hope en- 
tombed beneath the ruins of the barricades. 

Eome is Italy. Garibaldi saw it first, and strove 
to burst its gates for the entrance of Italian 
nationality with the rush of his volunteers. Ca- 
vour, the only statesman Italy — I had almost 
said the only statesman Europe — has had for a 
century, until Bismarck appeared, — Cavour saw it 
next, and attempted by diplomacy what the hero 
of revolution has failed to accomplish with the 
rifle and the sword. He died in the midst of his 
labors, his plans yet unconsummated ; and Italy 
stands to-day like a body without a head. Her 
natural capital, the city which most nobly repre- 
sents her past, so fitted to express her future, is 
in foreign and hostile hands. Nevertheless, the 
adage is correct, — Eome is Italy. 

If I should allude to the past, your minds would 
more readily yet catch the opening thought of this 
discourse, and realize the potent influence wielded 
by cities on national morals and life. 

Jerusalem, whether ablaze with the glory of 
golden tiles, as in the time of Solomon, or with all 
her magnificence buried beneath the ruins of her 
walls and the debris of the Temple, as during the 
captivity, — at whatever date or in whatever condi- 
tion you beheld her, she w^as Jerusalem still, and 
being Jerusalem, represented the Jews. The poetry, 
the piety, the bigotry, the glory and shame, of the 



224 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

Hebrew race were all enclosed within the circuit of 
her walls. Here they crowned their kings, stoned 
their prophets, and held their feasts. Here the harp 
of the Poet King sounded its melodious prophecies 
of the Messiah's birth, and here that Messiah re- 
ceived His sentence and His death. To the Jew 
there was but one city, as there was but one tem- 
ple, in all the world. The power and glory of the 
Jewish name were enclosed within the city of his 
home and heart. 

But why enumerate ? You are familiar with 
history. Why speak of Thebes with her hundred 
gates, through which power radiated to the re- 
motest corner of her domain; of Carthage, that 
swarthy rival of Old Eome, which dominated over 
the Afric coast ; of Alexandria, city of books, into 
which the lore of the whole world had been gath- 
ered ; of Tyre and Sidon, marvels of wickedness, 
associated with and begotten of wealth, such as the 
world had never seen, the sails of whose ships were 
of silk, and through whose streets fio'ated the odors 
of every clime ; or of those vast cities, each city 
an empire in itself, that stood along the banks of 
the many-mouthed Mle ; or of Eome herself, to 
whose consuls the whole world, marching along 
the Appian Way, brought tribute ? All these are 
known to you. The history of the human race has 
been but the history of cities. Their rise and fall, 
their progression and declension, are to the race 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 225 

what the ebb and flood of the tide are to the sea. 
They have been the thesauri of the world's treas- 
uries. The ingenuity and skill, the industry and 
perseverance, the valor and cowardice, the virtue 
and sin, the life and death, of each successive gen- 
eration have found expression in them. They have 
been the oracles of human wisdom, the monuments 
of human greatness, the arsenals of human power. 
Whether you study their rise, existence, or their 
fall, they epitomize the knowledge of the race and 
the results of human effort. 

It would be interesting, had we the time, to ex- 
amine into the causes which underlie the origin 
of cities, and trace out the mental, social, and 
material agencies to which their erection is due. 
It would be found, could we push our inquiries in 
this direction, that each of these had contributed its 
full share to the common result. By nature men 
are gregarious ; they flock together. The spirit of 
combination is as old as the race. Were the story 
of the building of Babel but a myth, it would 
still be pregnant with instruction. That attempt, 
that first gisjantic association of human endeavor, 
w^hether a fact or a fable, would stiU stand as a 
grand expression of a profound impulse, the em- 
bodiment of a primal idea. That embodiment by 
the wisdom and power of God was checked, the 
agents and agencies scattered ; but the idea, the cau- 
sal impulse remained, and does remain up to this 

10* o 



226 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS, 

day. While the race endures, the same tendency 
will prevail ; the same spirit of combination will 
receive the identical expression. The confusion 
of tongues cannot check it. Application over- 
comes the obstacle of diverse languages. The an- 
tagonism of speech can be harmonized, and the 
chaos of unintelligible sounds reduced to order. 
As the natural result of our social and mental 
construction, strengthened by considerations of in- 
terest, cities will continue to be builded ; Art will 
seek some central galleries in which to exhibit 
her achievements ; Eloquence will build a platform 
from which to address the multitude; Architec- 
ture will chisel its granite and mass its structures 
in imposing conjunction ; Commerce, inspired with 
the instinct of .trade, will land her cargoes at ac- 
cessible and central points. Men, from a natural 
tendency in part, from material necessity in part, 
will herd and mass together, even to their own 
detriment, and cities will be built. The future 
will be as the past. The causes which have existed 
will exist only more abundantly, and the history 
of the centuries to come, as of the centuries 
passed, will be the history of their cities. 

If you will take a map of the North American 
continent, as you behold the length of its sea- 
coast, its capacious harbors, the multitude of its 
navigable rivers, some of them almost bisecting 
the country, furnishing an inland communication 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 227 

iinri\ ailed in the world ; the vast extent and loca- 
tion of its great lakes ; the position of certain lo- 
calities, which makes them Loth tlie reservoir and 
outlet for the products of the adjacent country, — 
you will be led to exclaim, " This is to be a na- 
tion of cities." The very conformation of the coast 
compels us to this conclusion, and even declares 
where they shall be built. Take New York as an 
illustration : a city which reigns queen of a con- 
tinent, — a' city with an island for her throne, and 
ships for her messengers ; who delighteth herself 
with the cry of her pilots, and to whose feet 
the waves of either ocean wash the wealth of the 
world. Search for her origin. Her parentage was 
not of men. Her conception was of old time, 
when the Almighty traced the boundary of the 
sea. She was begotten with the primal pangs of 
nature, when this continent came forth from the 
womb of waters. 'New York is the child of God, 
born when He drew the outlines of our shores ; 
plighted to commerce and all its growth, when 
He placed her in the arms of two rivers, and 
breathed life into her by the cool breath of the 
ocean. Men, indeed, have clothed her in satin 
and adorned her with gold, but she was begotten 
out of the sea by the Spirit of the Lord. Con- 
sider the conformation of the coast, behold the 
vast extent of territory to which she is the natural 
outlet, and you see at a glance, that, granted a 



228 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

civilized and industrious population back of Man- 
hattan Island, and a city at that point is a com- 
mercial necessity. And to-day, with all her wealth 
and prestige, how long would ISTew York endure if 
the Hand which opened should close the outlet to 
the ocean, and sever that great artery which con- 
nects her by way of the lakes with the heart of 
the continent ? 

All that I have said touching ]S"ew York is 
equally true of Boston. Upon the shore of Mas- 
sachusetts Bay, so soon as New England should 
become populous, a city would be sure to rise. 
The instinct of Trade would naturally select this 
site as the centre of her efforts and her success. 
Here piers would be builded and warehouses 
erected. Here, following in tha train of wealth, 
mansions would successively rise. To this point 
art would be attracted, and here, in the leisure 
which money can purchase, letters would flourish, 
and every principle of science, in the necessities 
of your yearly growth, find substantial expression. 

You may go west, along the shores of the great 
lakes and the banks of its majestic rivers, and you 
will find that the same law holds good. Even be- 
yond the present limits of population, it is not 
difficult to locate those points where, as the rest- 
less multitude spreads itself over the plains, cities 
will spring up, and great central depots of wealth 
and power be established. Considering the en- 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 229 

ergy of our people, the natural tendency and nat- 
ural necessity of combination in all human under- 
takings, — considering the position and confor- 
mation of the continent, it is not hazardous to 
predict that this is pre-eminently to be a nation 
of cities. The Atlantic slope is already urban, 
and the time is not far distant when the yalley 
of the Mississippi will rival, in the number and 
magnificence of its cities, the valleys of the N'ile 
and the Euphrates, when the civilization and glory 
of the East were in their meridian glory. 

Consider, now, the importance of cities as a 
source of influence. 

If this reasoning is correct, if cities are to mul- 
tiply and abound, you will see that the whole com- 
plexion of our future is to take color and character 
from this fact. The character of the people, the 
character of our institutions, is to be vastly affected 
thereby. There is a certain influence, a certain 
atmosphere in city life, which modifies and shapes, 
not only the speech and manners, but the thoughts 
and opinions, of men greatly. Xew England char- 
acter is different to-day from what it was fifty 
years ago, because jN'ew England life is differ- 
ent now from what it w^as formerly. And this 
change in the life, in the thoughts, manners, and 
opinions of Xew England men and Av^omen has 
been brought about chiefly, as I believe, through 
the influence of our cities. Some of you, doubtless. 



230 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

can remember when the country influence prepon- 
derated in Massachusetts ; when the wealth of the 
State was more equally divided between the urban 
and rural population than it is now ; when in re- 
ligion, in politics, in trade, in jurisprudence, the 
towns and villages of the State held the heaviest 
side of the balance ; when the cities leaned, as it 
were, on the country, and felt their dependence upon 
it. You have lived to see all this changed ; you 
yourselves have aided to change it. The cities 
have broken away from their dependence on the 
country, and the country now depends on them. 
The cities now dictate to the towns and villages. 
Through their great dailies they dictate in politics ; 
through their pulpits, benevolent organizations, 
religious neivspapers, and publishing-houses they 
originate and express the moral convictions of the 
churches ; through their markets, their importers, 
their bank establishments, their stock exchanges, 
they dictate financially to the country; through 
art, sesthetically ; through architecture they shape 
the farmer's house ; through horticulture and land- 
scape-gardening they are improving the appear- 
ance of every village and increasing the value of 
every farm. The telegraph, the rail-car, and every 
invention whereby the facilities of locomotion have 
been increased, and personal transit from place to 
place made cheap and easy, have all assisted to 
bring about and hasten this transformation. We 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 231 

have already reached that point of progress in this 
direction that it can be in very truth said that 
there is no country ; in its old sense it does not 
exist. The country tavern and stage-coach have 
no more surely passed away than the old modes of 
thought, ideas, and character-forming habits have 
departed. City influence, city views, city customs, 
preponderate everywhere, and are destined to do 
so more and more. 

I say that this change, this influence, will go on. 
Its present momentum alone insures it. Every 
sign points in this direction. The future will 
be cast in this mould. The nation will be more 
and more deeply stamped with this impress. 

Consider the attractive power of cities. They 
draw the country population towards them by their 
magnetism. They are like huge sponges ; they 
absorb the talent, the enterprise, the ambition, of 
every community that they touch with their power 
and influence. Estimate the number of young men 
in Boston to-day that Were born outside the city's 
limits. I asked seven one day whence they came. 
Every one of them had come from Maine. Three 
out of the next five I met were born in New Hamp- 
shire. I took these twelve hap-hazard from my 
acquaintance. Take New York City. That city 
is a vast intellectual reservoir which drains half of 
New England, and would all of New Jersey were it 
not too sluggish to run ! It has passed into an ad- 



232 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

age, that " no active, ambitious young man stays 
in the country." He sets his face toward a city, as 
a devotee of Mahomet sets his face toward Mecca. 
It is very easy to complain of this. It is fash- 
ionable to denounce it. Political economists may 
declare that the foundation of all wealth, the basis 
of all true national development, is agriculture ; 
but neither regret nor economic demonstration will 
stop this great tidal movement of our population 
toward our cities. The laws which regulate such 
popular movements are beyond our control. Ee- 
gret will never modify them. They will continue 
to operate and influence until some counter-attrac- 
tion shall arise to neutralize them. Cities will 
multiply, cities will continue more and more to 
absorb the country, cities will eventually dictate 
the policy of the nation. 

Here our feet press the threshold of the labyrin- 
thine problem which, in the providence of God, 
we are called upon to penetrate and solve. Here 
we stand under the shadow of one of the great 
ominous questions of the future. The gravest 
question of our day — that which will tax and puz- 
zle us most, and yet one which challenges us to 
instant and painstaking inquiry — is this. What is, 
and what is to be, the moral position and character 
of our cities ? Can we safely trust them in re- 
spect to our liberties ? Can we safely trust them 
in respect to religion ? In those two propositions 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 233 

is wrapped up the destiny of the Eepublic and of 
the American Church. Will the Eepublic be se- 
cure ? Will the Church be equal to the emer- 
gency ? Here is ground for men of all creeds, of 
all opinions, of aD pursuits and trades, to stand 
upon in common, to cordially strike hands in har- 
mony of heart and action. 

Well, consider this question a moment in its 
relation to the Eepublic. 

If the Eepublic stands for anything, it stands 
not only as an expression of civil liberty, but for 
that which insures and guarantees this. When 
you discuss the continuance of the Eepublic, you 
discuss the continuance of law and order, and of 
public morality in all its various phases of growth 
and propagation. If the Eepublic means anything, 
it means a pure and upright judiciary, an active 
and untainted police administration, a well-pro- 
tected industry, a well-observed Sabbath, a strictly 
guarded and untampered ballot-box, and a sys- 
tem of public education unsoiled w^ith the touch 
of venal politics. These are to our free institu- 
tions what the roots are to the tree, — the channels 
of their growth, the braces of their power. When 
these are severed, when these are torn up and dis- 
placed, the vital currents cease to enter the trunk, 
the leaves wither, and the whole elaborate organi- 
zation hastens to decay. If the Eepublic, in all 
the phases of its life and expression, cannot stand 



234 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and thrive in the soil and atmosphere of our cities, 
then, unless those cities undergo a change for the 
better, the time will surely come when the Eepub- 
lic will not stand at all. It will fall, and find its 
burial amid the fragments of its own once glorious 
structure. Its monument will be the ruins of its 
own overthrow. 

Now what is the condition of our principal 
cities, politically, to-day ? Look at ]!^ew York, — 
a vast and almost bottomless cesspool of corrup- 
tion, a dead weight of 'ignorance and venality, 
which the whole Empire State can with difficulty 
buoy up ! Look at its judiciary, heavy with the 
murk of Tammany Hall, — a reproach to Ameri- 
can Justice throughout the world ! Look at its 
financial jugglery and shameful monopolies, at 
the expense of the nation and people ! Eecall 
that it owes even its police protection to the State. 
There has not been a time in twenty years when 
the suffrage of our greatest and, in some respects, 
our grandest city has not been two to one against 
every principle of justice and morality which un- 
derlies our free institutions ; when the Eepublic 
would have stood an hour left to the voice of its 
decision. It is safe to say that Eepublicanism 
in New York City is a dead failure. The majority 
of its population are as hostile to the very elements 
of American Liberty and the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence as ignorance and venality and brutal 
viciousness can be. 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 235 

You may go to Baltimore, to N'ew Orleans, to 
St. Louis, and even to Chicago, and you will find 
such a state of morals, such a perverted judiciary, 
such disregard of the Sabbath, that, if permitted 
to grow, will soon rank them in wickedness with 
the great Babylon of America. You may take, 
for instance, the influence of cities on the several 
State legislatures. You let a few millionnaires 
come together and form what is called a " ring," 
and what a pressure they can and do put upon 
legislation ! Measures opposed to every principle 
of public justice, bills creating and perpetuating 
monopolies which drain the best blood out of the 
industry of the State, are pushed through in the 
very teeth of all the opposition which a knowledge 
of their evil character and remaining virtue can 
heave up in their path. The outrage upon public 
sentiment and the true interests of the common- 
wealth is done openly, defiantly, unblushingly. 
But you should remember that this ill-omened in- 
fluence, this startling phenomenon of power, origi- 
nating and directed by pure selfishness, is yet in 
its infancy. It is but recently that it has entered 
as one of the elements of that problem which, 
under God, we are to work out on the shores of 
this continent. If already its strength is so con- 
siderable, what may we expect it to be when it 
shall have had time to grow and mature, and 
enter the lists against public morality and pub- 



236 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

lie interest in all the might of its fully developed 
manhood, equipped at every point ? 

ISTow consider for a moment the position of cities 
in reference to religion. 

At the first thought, when you consider the 
number and variety of Our church edifices, stand- 
ing along almost every street and around our 
squares, you would exclaim, " What a religious city 
this is ! how completely the population must be 
reached by the influence of the Gospel! how 
universal is the privilege of the sanctuary ! how 
thorough and general the Sabbath-school educa- 
tion ! " From this cursory view of things, one 
might conclude that all the families of the city 
must be church-goers, all the cliildren religiously 
instructed, and every soul reached by the minis- 
trations of the Gospel. But upon examination 
he would ascertain how erroneous such a conclu- 
sion is. He would discover that here, in Boston 
itself, vast multitudes never even enter a church ; 
that hordes of children swarm the streets as wild 
and untaught as if Boston was a heathen city; 
that the churches, instead of gaining upon the 
inr oiling tides of ignorance and superstition, do 
not even hold their own ; that their seating ca- 
pacity is not half equal to the necessities of the 
population, and, worse than all, not over half of 
the sittings provided are ordinarily occupied. 
And as these ugly facts thrust themselves upon 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 237 

his consciousness, he would be prompted to say, as 
some have said of late, " Protestantism is a failure." 
Well, there is a false and there is a true side to 
that statement. In its spirit, in its capacity to 
reach and elevate, in its destiny and ultimate 
issue. Protestantism is not and cannot be a failure. 
In it is light enough to illumine all the dark- 
ness of ignorance, and warmth enough to evaporate 
the dank vices which make so large a portion of 
our cities a moral marsh, a breeding-place of cor- 
ruption. But in its present state of expression, 
measured by those it has not reached, — by the ig- 
norance burrowing at the very doors of its churches, 
by the blinded eyes its fingers have never touched, 
by the naked it has never clothed, by those in 
prison it has never visited, by the souls in peril it 
has never saved nor made any attempt to save, — 
Protestantism in our principal cities is a failure. 
Neither the Eepublic nor Christianity could stand 
on the vote of our cities. Left to their suffrao-e, 
justice would become a mockery, liberty degenerate 
to license, and the Sabbath sink to a mere holiday. 
The failure of the Protestant Church to realize 
her relation to the masses has been and is her 
chiefest error, so far as Christianizing the world 
goes. We have hitherto cultivated the table-lands 
of society ; we must now drain the marshes and 
uplift the swamp level, by running purifying clian- 
nels through their oozy beds. From these rise 



238 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

those moral miasmas wliich carry taint and con- 
tagion to the very mountain-top of our civilization. 
A Spiritual Board of Health must be formed, and 
heavenly disinfectants be applied to every damp 
lane and filthy tenement of our cities. We must 
run our fingers under the very roots of society, and 
transplant it bodily into a drier and warmer soil. 
Tills is not pleasant work. It is a tiresome and 
hand-soiling horticulture. The fragrance of the 
rose and the orange is not in, it. Broad walks and 
wide lawns and the cooling shadow of trees do 
not invite and relieve the laborer. N'othing short 
of the pressure of clearly apprehended duty will 
sustain one in it. Easier by far is it to give char- 
ities than to distribute them ; to provide bandages 
than to bind up the bleeding wounds. And yet 
the work must be done, or the world will never 
be brought to the knowledge and the practice of 
Christian precepts. 

Now it is just this, the personality of well-doing, 
that I would place before you in this condition. 
As Christians, benevolently disposed, we should 
individualize our benevolence. It is not for the 
condition of the race at large that we are so re- 
sponsible as for those individual members of the 
race that are near us. I am not so anxious for 
the Christianization of Pekin and Calcutta as I 
am for the Christianization of Boston. It is the 
ignorance here I would enlighten, and the misery 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 239 

here I would alleviate. I do not blush for the 
heathenism of China so much as for the heathen- 
ism of North Street. I do not fear the cannibal 
of the South Seas so much as I do the drunkards 
and gamblers and Sabbath-breakers at our very 
doors. It is not over some Eome or far-distant 
barbarian city that I lament ; it is over this Jeru- 
salem of New England, this Mecca of the Ee- 
public, that I mourn. When we reflect how much 
the United States is to influence the world, and that 
as a nation we are growing to be more and more 
influenced by our cities, the improvement of their 
moral condition becomes the great question of the 
day, — a question which must be debated and set- 
tled speedily. I would that all the churches of 
this city, of all creeds or without creeds, might meet 
in solemn convention, to unite and. fix upon some 
plan by which, with the power of combined re- 
sources, they might carry personal cleanliness and 
comfort, good food and raiment, education and the 
glad news of Eedemption, to the dirty, the starving, 
the vicious and ignorant portion of our population. 
I believe that a movement might be inaugurated 
by which all the moral and humane influences of 
this city might be combined in furtherance of so 
blessed an undertaking. I know well that sectarian 
and denominational differences, that strong preju- 
dices and some bitter memories, stand in the way ; 
but when vice and squalor burrow under the very 



240 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

thresholds of our churches, when thousands live 
within sight of our steeples to whom the Sab- 
bath has no meaning, and Christ is an unknown 
word, save to point a jest or emphasize an oath, it 
is not the time for us to ask men, in order to find 
a point of difference, " What do you believe ? " but, 
that we may ascertain some sure ground of union, 
" What are you willing to do ? " We must address 
ourselves to this question, or else our church- 
steeples will seem to the multitude but cruel 
mockeries, and the volume of our prayers be 
drowned in the torrent of their cursing. 

I need not tell you how natural it is for men to 
exaggerate the value of forms and formulas. You 
know the lesson of history and the warning of 
Christ : we are to walk by the Spirit, not alone by 
the letter. We are to believe only that we may act. 
Faith is not the end. Pertinacious adherence to a 
creed, however true, is not holiness. It was not 
the beautiful beatitudes of Christ, nor the Sermon 
on the Mount, nor His farewell to His disciples, — 
which, as an expression of undying love, has no 
equal in literature, — it was His blood which saved 
us, by making atonement for our sins. It was 
what He did, not what He said, that liquidated 
Heaven's vast claim against us. And so, my 
friends, it is not our prayers and hymns, our words 
and thoughts and hopes, which meet the claim 
of duty now being put upon us ; it is by well- 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 241 

doing, not by well-saying or believing, that we 
can discharge the requirements of tlie hour. For 
one, and I say it gladly, whoever will work for 
Christ and man, let him come to my side, and he 
shall be to me as a brother. Not by his creed nor 
by his church ; not by his form of prayer, but 
by his works, will I know him. Not by the bark, 
nor the leaves, nor the shape of the trunk, but 
by the fruit, shall the tree be judged. Let the 
churches, let all the Christian men and women 
unite ; let the humane and religious portion of 
our population bury their past differences, cease 
from invective and useless discussion of each oth- 
er's peculiar form of belief, and join hands to 
ameliorate the condition of the poor and ignorant 
of the city. While we wrangle over theological 
beliefs, the sufferim:? and neglected die. 

As I walk the streets of our city, where vice 
makes its retreats, and poverty crouches in rags to 
conceal its nakedness ; as I think of the fingers 
that bleed from ill-paid toil, and the eyes that 
ache ; as I behold the swarms of children that 
must be rescued from the condition into which 
they were born, or perish, — Arabs of the street, 
and candidates for the gallows, from whom your 
prisons are fed, and the army of crime, already 
fearfully large in this country, receives its annual 
reinforcement; — as I behold these, I say, and 
think of their destiny, I feel that even a Hindoo 
11 p 



242 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

would be welcome, could lie aid me to save them 
from their fate. the patience of God, that 
He can bear with our idling and listlessness ! that 
He can look calmly on and see us debate trivial 
differences, and elevate our prejudices to the dig' 
nity of essentials, while thousands on thousands 
living all about us are at this moment without 
God and without hope in the world 1 I marvel 
that He does not shake the heavens in angry 
warning over our heads, or visit us with some 
calamity, — some terrible disclosure of crime that 
would make the edifice of public order reel, and 
startle us into such thoughtful anxiety as Avould 
unite us in the one great work of rooting out the 
vice, elevating the morals, and establishing on 
surer foundations the fabric of the great Eepublic. 
Our city is full of unconverted men and women. 
What are we to do with them ? Let them remain 
strangers to God, and ignorant of the Gospels ? 
Is that the voice of our piety ? It is full of igno- 
rance and vice ; it is full of license and misery. 
The soil under our feet is sown thick with the 
seeds of future crime ; the air above us is hot 
with inflammable elements. We see our peril ; we 
see our duty. Here the power of Christianity is 
to be put to the test before the eyes of the whole 
world. My friends, we must form some organiza- 
tion, with force sufficient to meet the emergency. 
We must take the last element of risk out of the 



THE POWER OF CITIES. 243 

future. We must make this city, — which was 
the cradle of American Liberty, the birthplace of 
our Nationality, — from Beacon Hill to North 
Street, all Christian. 



244 MUSIC-HALL SEKMONS. 



SEEMO¥ XII. 

THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON, AND HOW 
TO IMPROVE IT. 

I HAD intended, friends, to present to yon, in 
this tlie closing discourse of tlie series, such 
statistics and data in respect to the moral condi- 
tion of our city as would give you all an intelli- 
gent and exact understanding of the matter, and 
let you know just where we stand. But after hav- 
ing devoted much time, and not a little labor, to 
the compilation of the needed material I had ob- 
tained, I found that I had collected subject-matter 
for a volume rather than for one discom^se ; and I 
was constrained to omit altogether the data and 
explanation to which I have referred, and to con- 
line myseK to a course of discussion and sug- 
gestion this evening which, although less satis- 
factory to a student of social science, may prove 
more pleasant and profitable to a popular assem- 
blage. And even after having adopted this latter 
plan, I found it impossible to compress within the 
required limits of time what I mslied to say ; and 
I shall, therefore, from a fear of wearying your 
patience, omit in the delivery a portion of my 
discourse. 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 245 

One tiling must be borne in mind by those who 
would obtain data on which to base an intelligent 
judgment. It is this, Where and what is the source 
of crime in this city ? Where are the springs which 
feed this prurient reservoir ? Whence come those 
streams of evil supply which keep this marsh of 
iniquity ever full of impure waters, ever dense 
with miasmatic vapors, of which virtue no sooner 
breathes than it dies ? Does it feed itself ? Is it a 
depth beneath which there is a deeper depth of 
ever-rising foulness ? Does crime generate crime 
and disease disease, as virtue promotes virtue and 
health health ? My friends, facts do not allow us 
so to conclude. Crime kills itself. Its law is not 
the law of life, but the law of death. The tendency 
of excess is to cut off the supply which feeds it. 
Indulgence does not beget healthy, long-lived off- 
spring. It is among the poor, the vicious, and the 
sensual that Death has his own w^ay. There dis- 
ease meets few checks ; sanitary precautions are un- 
known, unpractised, impossible. Left to the force 
and operation of its own laws of life and association, 
Worth Street would soon be depopulated. Scarce 
a babe born there would survive its infancy. Ere 
its young eyes had fully opened to the light they 
would be closed forever, and its little body would 
sleep in that silent chamber which is beyond the 
reach of neglect and cruelty. 

No, the source of crime is not in North Street ; 



246 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

it lies farther up. There you behold the result, not 
the beginning ; there are the bitter dregs, but if you 
would see the beaded surface of the cup you must 
look higher. Crime works downward. Like frost, 
it strikes the upper branches first. The dance- 
house and brothel are the last result of a long 
course of sinful indulgence. The wine-cup, the 
theatre, the ball-room, seduction, fashionable loose- 
ness in morals in the upper circles of society, — : 
these are the sources whence flow those evil wa- 
ters which, gathering impurity as they descend, 
stas^nate at last in l^orth Street. 

In this connection you see the powerlessness 
of police regulations to reform society. Even if 
reformation ever came from repression, it would 
still be beyond the power of force to accomplish 
the desired end, because the seeds and roots of the 
evil are where the fingers of no municipal regula- 
tion can reach them. You cannot put espionage 
upon vice previous to some overt act. You can, 
it is true, station your police in the hovels and 
dance-houses of E"orth Street, for there vice is 
open, coarse, uncovered ; but you cannot enter the 
mansions of the rich, and those whose social posi- 
tion protects them from legal inquisition, — where 
vice, if it exist, is veiled under the gauze of out- 
ward propriety or rouged with the colors of virtue. 
This fact must ever be borne in mind by students 
of the social question. 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 24? 

But, in point of fact, force is not the agent of 
reformation. Correct morals cannot be beaten into 
a man by the laton of a policeman. The muni- 
cipal court and the house of correction are not 
the fountains whence the waters of regeneration 
flow. Law can punish and kill, but it cannot 
redeem. It can confine the body, but it cannot 
renew the character. You may load down your 
statute-books with penal enactments until they 
cover every detail of crime, and yet not a thief 
would be made honest, not a fallen woman re- 
stored by your legislation. I know well that law 
can remove temptation from men; that it can 
check, by the fear of penalty, the open indulgence 
of existing passions ; but farther than this we 
cannot rely on it. You must not suppose that 
when you have placed a policeman on every 
corner, and a detective in every dark alley, you 
have done all that you can do to improve the 
moral condition of your city, and make life and 
j)roperty safe. The tree whose every leaf rep- 
resents a separate curse, whose odor is disease, 
and whose fruit is death, draws its life from soils 
far beneath the surface. Its roots are imbedded 
amid the ignorance, the appetites, and the pas- 
sions of men. These law never reaches. You 
.might as well expect to quiet the surging of a 
boiling caldron by skimming the surface as to 
quiet the evil agitations of men's hearts by legal 



248 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

enactments. In vain resort to law, in vain mul- 
tiply police ; the tumult will still go on, pas- 
sions will still rage, appetites still seek indul- 
gence, and the heart still beat behind the prison- 
bars with the same wild unrest that impelled to 
the commission of the crime. Law, therefore, — 
first, because it cannot reach the source of crime, 
and, secondly, because, if it could, it is unable to 
remove it, — cannot be relied upon to accomplish 
what is the crying necessity of the hour. 

But if police regulations cannot effect the refor- 
mation, neither are the moral and spiritual forces 
now in the field able to accomplish the desired 
work. These forces may be represented by four 
elements of power, — the Church, the Mission 
School, the Public School, and the City Missionary 
Society. Take these in their order and examine 
them ; observe the extent and the limitation of 
their power. 

So far as the influence of the Church extends, 
it is potential for good. The preacher covers in 
his discourses a wide field of duty and instruc- 
tion. There is little in ethics, there is little in 
politics, there is little in human progress, of which 
the pulpit does not treat. I am willing to grant 
all that the warmest advocate of the Church as 
a power in American society can claim. I appre- . 
ciate fully the influence of repeated weekly minis- 
trations of the clergymen of this city upon its 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 249 

morals and piety. So far as their voice extends, 
it is a voice of quickening and inspiration ; but a 
vast multitude in this city never hear the preach- 
er's voice. The glad news of redemption through 
Clirist ; the instruction which would, if heard, en- 
lighten their minds ; the exhortation which would 
strengthen their virtue ; the supplication which 
would lift their hearts to the Throne, is never 
heard. The sound of no church-bell calls them 
to prayer ; no altar invites their presence ; no 
pastor watches over their souls. In a Christian 
land they are without Christianity ; in a city of 
prayer their lips know not the ha.bit or the value 
of supplication. Living by our very side, immor- 
tal as ourselves, they are without God and without 
hope in tlie world. Nor is there any prospect that 
this lamentable state of things will be changed for 
the better in the immediate future. The fashion 
of church architecture which is now in vogue is 
one of the most serious obstacles in the path of 
reform. Wealth builds the churches, not to ac- 
commodate the poor, but for wealth to worship in. 
I am not one of those who cry out against elab- 
orate and costly edifices of worship. Let the archi- 
tect and the artisan exhaust their utmost resources 
to adorn and make imposing the structures in which 
the Most High is to be adored. Nothing is too 
grand, vast, or magnificent for such a service. I 

only ask that, wdien erected, they shall be open 
11* 



250 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

to all. Let the wealthiest and the poorest, the 
strongest and the weakest, the taught and the 
nntanght, worship side by side. But the day 
which shall see this aspiration realized in this 
country is, I fear, remote. Pride and fashion, 
prejudice and timidity, will be slow to yield their 
sovereignty over the American mind. The tide 
sets in the wrong direction, and the magnificent 
opportunity is floating away from us. As the 
facts now stand, our population is increasing much 
faster than our church accommodations ; and he 
who looks to our churches to redeem our cities 
from their present deplorable state of semi-hea- 
thenism will live, I fear, to groan over a bitter 
disappointment. 

The second agent which is now being relied 
upon to convert our cities is the Mission School. 

My friends, I fear the position I must assume 
in this discourse will expose me to the charge of 
captiousness ; but, believe me, I do not aspire to 
be regarded as a professional fault-finder. Neither 
in spirit nor in practice am I a carper. I only set 
myself to analyze certain factors which represent 
the present available moral forces of our city. If 
my analysis leads me to a conclusion other than 
hopeful, I am not to blame. I am guided, not by 
my desires, but by my convictions. I seek only 
the testimony of facts, and abide strictly by that 
decision which they compel. That mission schools 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 251 

accomplish much good, give much needed instruc- 
tion, and in individual cases bring about a radical 
conversion, I do not deny. For years I served as 
a teacher or officer in them ; for other years I have 
studied them and their influence in connection 
with my pastoral labors. I am an enthusiastic 
advocate of the system. But I am convinced that, 
though their influence for good is great, it is over- 
rated by the public. The system is not capable of 
accomplishing any such results as are expected of 
it. Children that are depraved in private cannot be 
reformed in public. There is no influence that 
can , stand against home influence. AVhen the 
parents are as near being devils as the limitations 
of the flesh will allow, and home is a social and 
domestic hell ; when the malevolent passions are 
the first to wake in the child's breast, and the first 
sounds its ears interpret are those of brawling and 
oaths ; when all the surroundings of the boy are 
gross and sensual, his playmates incipient thieves, 
the hero of his neighborhood a successful burglar, 
and his vernacular the blasphemy which cuts the 
air like a flying scrap of red-hot iron, — it is like a 
farce to expect that an hour's instruction once a 
week in a mission school will reform him. That 
hour is like a plank thrust out from the bank into 
a seething current, but it is idle to suppose that it 
can hold its own for an instant against the one hun- 
dred and sixty-seven other hours of the week. The 



252 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

mission teacher has only one foot of the lever on 
his side, while the Devil has one hundred and 
sixty-seven on his, weighted also in his favor with 
natural and acquired depravity beyond estimate. 
Is there any doubt, friends, which will win, which 
will lift, the boy ? Why, the Sabbath-school teach- 
er has no chance at all ! The odds are all against 
him. Now and then he makes a success. There 
are exceptions to every rule. I am not talking 
of these. I am not talking of what supernatural 
power may, at certain long intervals of time, effect. 
The age of miracles is not "entirely passed. Now 
and then the voice, which even the grave must obey, 
speaks, and a soul, startled from a sleep heavier 
than that which held the body of Lazarus, comes 
forth to the amazement of its friends. But mira- 
cles are rare. We have no right to make them the 
basis of our expectations. And if we seriously pro- 
pose to improve the moral condition of this city, 
we shall make a great mistake if we suppose that 
any multiplication of mission schools will do it. 
A city of debauched parents and godless homes 
will be a city of idiots and thieves and paupers 
until you reform these sources of their supply. 
Virtue, under certain conditions of life, is impossi- 
ble : the conditions must be changed before it can 
exist. You might as reasonably expect to grow 
violets on Charles Eiver fiats as to rear a child in 
holiness in a basement in North Street. I have 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 253 

been in dens of this city where even a saint would 
stitie, so rank was the atmosphere with vice. The 
causes of crime do not lurk in the mind alone ; 
they exist in the body as well. And the only 
way to reform the mind and soul is to reform the 
body first. Diet and cleanliness precede the Lord's 
Prayer in the alphabet of social ethics. One of the 
most practicable and worthy undertakings in the 
way of reform is, as it appears to me, the effort 
that is being made to provide Christian homes for 
the homeless children of our cities. This is better, 
so far as it is possible, than mission-school enter- 
prises. Thei'e are thousands of children in this city 
to-nidit who can never become industrious and vir- 
tuous men and women here. They are like young 
and delicate plants which have sprung up in too 
damp a soil. They need transplanting. The gar- 
dener must go down into the soft muck, and run his 
fingers carefully under theil' roots, and set them 
in warmer and drier soil. So it is with these 
children. They are now in a moral marsh. All 
the conditions of growth are against them. We 
must lift them out of their present surroundings, 
and start them anew in better. Five thousand 
children should be sent into the country from Bos- 
ton alone. The country wants them, and they 
need the air and work, and such homes as can be 
found nowhere save in the country. Take them 
from their debauched and brutalizing parents ; 



254 MUSIC-HALL SEEMONS. 

• 
take them by the strong hand of legal provis- 
ion, if necessary. You take them thus to send 
them to prison, the reform ship, and. the house of 
correction ; can you not, then, take them in order 
to give them health and home and holiness ? Talk 
about parental rights ! Wliat right has a father to 
brutalize his boy, to beat his body, to debase liis 
soul, to educate him by speech and example to 
be a pauper, a thief, or a sot ? What right has a 
mother to prevent a girl's development in woman- 
hood, to stand between her soul and virtue, be- 
tvreen her mind and knowledge ? Has the State no 
rights in her children ? Is there a boy in your 
streets in whose growth and character the Com- 
monwealth is not interested ? Has humanity no 
rights ? Are we to stand idly by, and see minds 
darkened and bodies diseased and souls lost 1 Has 
God no rights, and must His people continue to 
see the city which religion founded and which rehg- 
ion has adorned surrendered over to a heathenism 
which has in it all the moral darkness of Africa, 
with a thousand-fold more cunning and vicious- 
ness ? Has Liberty no right even to protect her- 
self ? Must she permit, without protest, the ark 
of her safety, the ballot-box, to be submerged and 
swamped beneath a rising deluge of vice and igno- 
rance ? For one, I am not of the number who 
believe it. We have a right, I maintain, to take 
these children, by statute if need be, and put 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 255 

them a thousand miles from the corruption in 
Avhich they had the misfortune to be born, — to 
place the width of the continent between them 
and that daily and hourly contamination which 
steals the name of mother and .the title of father 
the better to fence itself from moral and legal 
check. Not only so, but it is the duty of the State 
to protect childhood from such influences as are 
sure, if allowed to exist, to prevent them from ever 
becoming honest, industrious, and intelligent citi- 
zens. The object of government is to preclude the 
need of jails and poor-houses, and not to build 
them, — to assist man to develop in worthy direc- 
tions his character, and give the lowest a chance 
to rise. And, in the furtherance of this object, it 
has the right to separate the children of misfor- 
tune from the dire conditions of their birth, and 
remove them to more favorable ones of life and 
growth. 

But it is not my intention to discuss all the 
minor questions of duty and expediency which 
grow out of the main consideration, — the moral 
improvement of our cities. I return from what 
may be regarded a digression to allude to one 
other movement in the riqht direction. I refer 
to what is known as the Industrial School enter- 
prise. 

Consider this matter a moment. Get an intel- 
ligent conception of the causes which make this 



256 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

mbvement eminently a necessity. There is a crime 
among us of which you all know by report at least, 
although I doubt if one in a hundred outside of the 
police force has any idea of the extent to which it 
abounds. And yet it seeks little concealment, — 
only enough to hide itself from the eyes of the 
unobserving, or those who do not wish to see. It 
walks your streets, infests your Common, ren- 
dezvouses in your theatres, rents your tenements, 
rustles its silks in some of your finest mansions, — 
even audiences convened for the worship of God 
have more than once been put under police espio- 
nage in this city to protect the sanctity of the 
occasion from the intrusion of this nameless crime. 
Now whence does it get its supply ? Having in 
the lives of its personal victims but an average of 
three years, and losing thirty per cent of its num- 
ber every twelve months, how comes it that its 
ranks are ever full ? Through what conductors 
that impart poison come the waters that keep this 
polluted cistern filled continually to its very brim ? 
Well, there are many sources of supply. Seduction 
yields a certain proportion ; inherent depravity 
adds its per cent ; intemperance and ill-treat- 
ment by parents, relatives, or husbands ; indo- 
lence ; evil companionship, — each yields its share 
to swell the awful tide : but another cause remains 
to be mentioned, which gives, according to the 
best data gathered, over one fourth of the whole 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 257 

number, — it is destitution. Of two thousand sub- 
jects examined in New York City, it was ascer- 
tained that five hundred and twenty-five were 
compelled to become prostitutes through desti- 
tution. They liad no inclination for the horrid 
life ; e\-ery instinct of their natures rebelled against 
it ; but they were driven to it by sheer starva- 
tion. jNIothers sold their chastity to buy bread for 
their children ; daughters, to procure medicines for 
their sick parents, — yea, in some cases, that their 
mothers mi^ht have a roof to shelter them in their 
last sickness, and a bed on which to die in peace. 
This is not imagination employed to paint a pic- 
ture to excite your sympathy ; I am only quoting 
official facts and figures. Nor w^as this destitution, 
in the majority of cases, the result of improvi- 
dence ; it was the natural result of that false sys- 
tem of female education which prevails in this 
country^ which leaves the women of the land to the 
spol't of a ficlde fortune. AYe educate our girls to 
spend and not to earn, to depend upon others for 
support and not upon themselves, — leaving them 
at the same time exposed to every contingency of 
sickness and death, which often deprives them in 
a moment of that support which they need, and 
Avithout which they cannot live with virtue, unless 
assisted by charity. I know that we plume our- 
selves upon the educational facilities that we 
enjoy. It is our boast that knowledge is open to 

Q 



258 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

all; and tlie boast is allowable, if by knowledge 
yon mean only that wliich belongs to scholarship, 
which adorns character with the power and grace 
of intellectual acquisition, which fits our girls for 
the, parlor and for that leisure and refined com- 
panionship which wealth and fashion secure and 
demand. But if knowledge means something more 
than this, — if it includes that power which en- 
ables one to support himself, which makes the 
fingers worthy allies of the brain, which arms one 
against the contingencies of life, the uncertainties 
of fortune, — if knowledge means this, — tlien is 
our boast but the assumption of unthinking conceit, 
for such knowledge America does not give and 
never has given to her children. 

Why, look at your educational system. Ex- 
amine it soberly a moment, and see what it does 
and does not do. 

You take a girl of poor parentage and social in- 
feriority, whose parents do not know perhaps how 
to read or write, yet a girl of promise, quick to 
learn, apt to imitate, physically beautiful. For 
eight years — years which cover the formative pe- 
riod of her life — you give her the best advantages 
of your superb public schools. She sits at the 
same desk with the rich man's daughters, recites 
in the same class, studies the same books, hears 
their conversation, adopts their standard of taste, 
their ideas of dress and views of life and labor. 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 259 

For eight years yon have been edncating her to 
love ease and refinement, and all the concomitants 
of such a state. At last the girl is graduated, — 
graduated, I will admit, a lady. You have taught 
her art and science, literature and poetry, made 
her fit for the parlor and the mansion. You have 
educated her pride, her vanity, lier taste. You 
have unfitted her for her former life and sphere. 
Will she ^0 down and drudoe wdth her imorant 
mother ? Will she mate with and marry the com- 
panion of her coarse, hard-working brothers ? ^Ij 
friends, such a supposition is against all reason. 
It flies in the face of well-established social ten- 
dencies. No, you have made her a lady, as Amer- 
icans understand that term, and a lady she will 
be. If her beauty and accomplishments win her 
a husband able to provide her with a home, that 
home she will adorn and that husband she will 
make happy. If not, wJiat ? Will some of you 
answer ? You have made her a queen, now guar- 
antee her a throne. AVliat can she do ? Teach, 
you say. Fifty applicants for every position, I re- 
spond. She might set type, and earn from twelve 
to twenty dollars per week; but you have not 
taught her. She might operate a telegraph, but 
she knows not even the alphabet of the art. She 
might mould and engrave, and win a generous sup- 
port, perhaps fame ; but your schools provide no 
teachers for so beautiful' and lucrative a profes- 



260 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

sion. She might even earn a fair competence as 
a seamstress, but the whirr of a seAving-macliine 
would disturb the class in philosophy and French. 
What can she do, I repeat ? Clerk it for six 
dollars per week, and pay five for her board and 
room-rent ! 

My friends, virtue will not live at such a rate. 
You have no right to expect it will. If you edu- 
cate girls to expect luxury, you must provide them 
with the means to honestly obtain it. It is the 
duty of those who shape society to remove temp- 
tation from the people, to make virtue easy, and 
put vice at the greatest possible disadvantage. 
But the educational and social system which we 
tolerate in America reverses this wise rule. We 
make vice easy, nay, almost a necessity, in that we 
educate our girls for a style of life which nothing 
but labor liberally compensated, or vice, can sup- 
port, and then deny them both the labor and the 
compensation. Under the workings of our present 
arranc^ements virtue starves and vice feasts. The 
one drudges its life out in rags ; the other prome- 
nades your streets in silks. Many a female clerk 
can save but a dollar a week. That is the amount 
she has left' after deductino' the cost of her board 
and lodging. The pitiful sum represents six days 
of weary toil. But a smile will buy her a dress, 
and a week's compliance with temptation put 
more money in her pocket than she could save 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 261 

by the practice of a year's economy. Such are 
the facts of the case, and the crime will increase 
so lono" as the cause is allowed to remain. 

If an enlarged system of education be objected 
to on the ground of expense ; if you should say, 
" Your theory is correct enough, but its reduction 
to practice would add twenty per cent to the cost 
of maintaining our public schools, and we cannot 
afford it," I reply. You can afford anything which 
lessens crime twenty per cent. Virtue is never 
dear and vice never cheap at any price. Con- 
tented and hopeful Industry, and Morality, her 
twin-sister, — these are to the state what springs 
are to rivers ; and Avhatever can add appreciably 
to these should receive at once the attention and 
support, not only of those in authority, but of all 
who have the honor of the Commonwealth and 
the good of humanity at heart. 

I have now spoken of the Church, the Mission 
School, and the Common School as agents of re- 
form, and suggested the weakness, the limitations, 
and the inefficiency of each, as measured by the 
especial work to be done. Only one more agent 
remains to be considered. I refer to those efforts 
wliich for the most part are made through what 
are known as City Missionary Societies. 

These societies accomplish, beyond doubt, much 
good. The persons employed are men and women 



262 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

of piety and zeal. Far be it from me to lessen 
in the least the value of their self-denying labors, 
or detract an iota from the estimation in which 
they are deservedly held by the Christian public. 
I am not talking of persons, but of systems ; not 
of agents, but of organizations. Speaking thus, 
and with no personal allusions whatever, I main- 
tain that city missionary societies are doing, and 
can do, as now conducted, scarcely anything to 
meet the physical and moral necessities of our city. 
Individuals here and there are assisted, — fed, 
clothed, and reformed ; but the ignorant, impover- 
ished, and vicious class, as a class, remains sub- 
stantially untouched. There are many reasons 
to account for this state of things. In the first 
place, w^e have not admitted our responsibility in 
the matter. The Christian public have not seri- 
ously interested themselves in it. We have not 
confessed, even to ourselves, that we are under any 
obligation to the poor, the fallen, and the falling ; 
our aim, our chief effort, has been to protect our- 
selves from them. If we could keep our lives 
and property passably safe ; if, through police reg- 
ulations, we could overawe the vicious classes, 
and keep them in subjection to law, so that they 
should not gain the ascendency and imperil our 
material interests ; if we could only confine them 
within certain sections of the city, as we do In- 
dians upon their reservations, we have been con- 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 263 

tent. But that we were really responsible before 
God for their moral condition, or had any positive 
obligation in the matter, this we have never seri- 
ously believed. 

In the second place, we have never made any 
dowTiright, determined effort to overcome the evil. 
It has been fashionable for each of our churches 
to sustain a mission school, to support a city mis- 
sionary, and take up occasionally a contribution for 
the " Wanderers' Home," and similar institutions, 
and so we have done it; but as to joining hands in 
fraternal union, as to rising in our might and say- 
ing, " Cost what it may, this shame and danger 
must be removed from our midst, this home 
heathenism must be rooted out," we never have 
done it. No such effort has been made here as 
was made under the leadership of Chalmers in 
Edinburgh to reform the vicious classes of that 
city. We have worshipped our God in comfort- 
able temples, sung our hymns of praise and joy, in- 
dulged in splendid seclusion our hopes of heaven, 
as if there were not thousands within the sound 
of our Sabbath chimes Avho had no temples in 
which to worship, no hymns to sing, no joy to 
cherish. And if we have at intervals warmed up 
to the work of saving souls, if we have longed and 
given to spread the Gospel news, it has been for 
the Caffre and the benighted heathen on some far- 
distant shore, and not for men and women living 



264 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and dying at our very side, who - know nothing 
of Jesus save as a term with which to edoe their 
wit or emphasize an oath. And if one, driven by 
curiositv or some worthier motive, O'oes down 
into this moral Gehenna that yawns at our very 
feet, and, returning therefrom as from tlie very 
valley of corruption, lifts his voice to tell us of the 
sights he saw and the sounds he heard, we regard 
him as a second-rate sensationalist, whose trade it 
is to deal out to his audiences exaggerated descrip- 
tions of pathetic and liorrihle experiences. The 
speaker is not credited, and the audience remains 
unconvinced. 

Tlie best plan, as it appears to me (to get at the 
matter in a business-like way) is to do here what 
Chalmers did in Edinburgh, — district the city, and 
apportion the districts among those churches of 
the city willing to embark in the enterprise. Hold 
each church responsible for its section, and let 
none undertake to cover more territory than can 
be cultivated thoroughly, and at once. The work 
should include every branch of reformation, begin- 
ning with the lowest, and in certain sections of our 
city it would be found to be the most essential, — 
the body. Cleanliness precedes piety in the order 
of spiritual development. The bath-tub before 
the Bible, soap before the religious tmct. The 
work must be from house to house, one at a time, 
and, as the prime condition of success, in connec- 



THE MORAL COXDITION OF BOSTON. 265 

tion with civil authority and co-operation with the 
'police. 

This last suggestion may appear startling to 
you. It certainly is novel, but I am convinced 
that it is both necessary and feasible. Indeed, I 
would not predict success of the most earnest 
effort, under the most judicious management, on 
any other condition. In order that any salutary 
reform may be effected, certain nuisances must be 
•abated, which can be done only through civil ac- 
tion. Certain laws, now a dead letter or nearly so, 
must be rigidly enforced, but this can be done only 
through the police department. The moral and 
the civil forces must work in union in order to 
effect their object. At present they are divorced, 
and alone neither can accomplish what they might 
if united. 

Look at this matter a moment. The first essen- 
tial of reform is knowledoje. The reformer must 
make himself acquainted with the habits and cus- 
toms of the depraved, and the causes which lead 
them astray, and which now operate to keep them 
in bondao'e. He must learn to distino-uish be- 
tween the hardened criminal and the novice in 
crime, and tell at a glance to which class a person 
belongs. He must know the haunts of vice, the 
dens of infamy, the hovels of poverty, and all the 
concomitants of those whom he is to benefit. 
Without such knowledge he is as powerless to 

12 



266 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

help as a physician, when he finds himself face 
to face with a new, nnheard-of, and virulent form 
of contagion. Well, what do we do ? Why, we 
elect some pious woman as our city missionary, — 
a woman who knows no more of vice in its origin, 
growth, subterfuges, and deceits than your wife by 
your side, my friend. You send out that woman, 
fitted neither by nature nor education for the work, 
and pit her against the hardest, most cunning, 
shrewdest class of our population. They masquer- 
ade to her face, and laugh at her behind her back. 
She is a mere shuttle for the nervous strokes of 
their wit to pass to and fro between the warp of 
their coarse mirth. You have sent her to a work 
novel, arduous, demanding peculiar natural quali- 
ties and a peculiar knowledge which she does not 
possess, and the result is what every intelligent 
person would expect : the ignorant are ignorant 
still, and the tide of vice and evil indulgence casts 
its sluggish waters higher and higher up, until 
they wash the very foundations of your churches. 
I would give more for two Christian ex-policemen 
as city missionaries than any fifty church-mem- 
bers you may select and send down as evangelists 
to North Street. My two would relieve more hon- 
est poverty, stop more brutality, minister to more 
sickness, reform more drunkards, lift more of the 
fallen, detect more hypocrisy, do more good, than 
all your fifty put together. 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 267 

And here permit me to say a word concerning 
the personnel of your police force. For a year I 
have watched the department closely, made my- 
self acquainted with the duties and responsibilities 
of the policeman, as he goes his daily and nightly 
rounds. I know the estimation in which the aver- 
age policeman is. held by the wicked, the poor, and 
the unfortunate ; and here I bear a sincere and, 
as I believe, an intelligent testimony, not merely 
as to faithfulness in discharge of their difiicult 
duties, but more especially in reference to their 
character and standing as men, amid the classes 
with wdiich they are more immediately brought 
in contact. Of their official conduct and services 
public reports speak ; but of their numberless acts 
of kindness to the poor, their deeds of charity to 
the friendless, their self-sacrifice, often of both time 
and money, to assist the destitute and the unfortu- 
nate, — of these it is in my power, as it is certainly 
a pleasure for me, to bear witness. Many a warm 
Christian heart beats under the policeman's badge. 
Many a patrolman of your city has endeared him- 
self to the poor and the sick of his beat by his 
deeds of love and his words of counsel and sym- 
pathy. More than one member of the force, as I 
have reason to know, has fulfilled the highest 
ideal of a police-officer, in that he is regarded, not 
merely as an officer of the law, but as a friend and 
counsellor in times of trouble. My warmest sym- 



268 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

patliy and admiration are given to these men, who, 
without the support or praise of any, without even 
any profession on their part, are doing noble mis- 
sionary service for the city and for God. 

My idea is, as I have said, that all our mission- 
ary efforts should be conducted in connection with 
the civil power and the police. We need the 
knowledge that these men alone can give us. 
What do we clergymen and citizens know of the 
unfortunate and criminal classes of our city, com- 
pared with these men whose duty it is to become 
intimately acquainted with them ? They have 
studied the problem as we have not. Standing 
amid the results of indulgence and crime, they 
can tell you the causes, point out the several 
stages of that long yet swift descent which, begin- 
ning at the level of innocence, landed the girl in 
!N"orth Street. Take any clergyman in this city; 
let him dofP his clerical robes and don the blue 
uniform, and pass five years on his beat in North 
Street, — every day and night of those years on the 
alert, studying countenances, watching modes of 
life and their results, seeing the benefit and the 
abuse of law, learning the goodness and the mean- 
ness of men as only a patrolman can, — studying 
this great problem of the causes which vitiate a 
population, and which reform. Let a clergyman 
do this for five years, I say, and what professional 
brother in this city would be able to advise, touch- 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 269 

ing missionary work, as could he ? But if five years 
could do so mucli to furnish one with needed knowl- 
edge for tliis service, what must we conclude con- 
cerning those who have spent ten, fifteen years, 
nay, almost a lifetime, as some of your police-offi- 
cers have, in just this business ? If I had the 
missionary work of this city intrusted to me to 
organize and conduct, the first thing I should do 
would be to invite the ^Mayor of the city and 
the captains of the police to assist me in map- 
ping out the plan, and urge their co-operation 
in its general execution. More intelligent, will- 
ing, and zealous co-laborers it would be difficult 
to find. I am not sure but that, before this 
great work will ever be intelligently undertaken, 
some central organization must be formed; a 
church dedicated solely for this purpose must 
be built, open to all willing to work for God and 
man, — a church of great wealth, gathered from 
all denominations, and numerous in membership, 
manifold in diversity of talents, whose sole mission 
shall be to wash and whiten the moral unclean- 
liness of Boston. All hail to the day when such a 
church shall take its stand among us, and proclaim, 
" For the sake of the Eepublic, for the sake of hu- 
manity, and — nobler motive yet — for the glory 
of God, we devote the energies, the prayers, the 
wealth of this church, to the Christianization of 
Boston." 



270 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

My friends, I tliank you for your patience, which 
I feel I have sorely taxed to-night, and for the 
courtesy and kindness with which you have here 
received my words. I will detain you but a mo- 
ment longer. It is to say that, upon whatever 
sanitary and reformative agents we may rely to 
assist us in the work, it is in religion alone that 
we can find the motives and the spirit needed. 
It is the power of God unto salvation that we must 
have with us in all our efforts, if we are to succeed. 
"Not to the body alone does triumph come through 
the Cross, but a more far-reaching and extensive 
victory comes to the soul. The soul has its dis- 
eases, — where shall it find a physician ? It is 
stricken with weakness, — by whom shall it be 
braced with power ? There is to virtue a grave, 
and the wailing above it is sadder than the surge 
of winds through the cypress. Hot are the tears 
that fall above it, and no human cry can express 
the agony of a spirit bowed down in despair, and 
groaning for virtue lost, for manhood smitten, for 
honor gone forever. Show me where love was 
lost, where faith was rent, where hope died out, 
where all that made the man went down, and I 
will show you a spot too sad for cypress, too black 
for crape ; and yet hope may come to that despond- 
dent soul and light to that darkened spot. 

Nevermore shall the stricken eagle rise ; never- 
more with living wing shall it sport along the 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 271 

edges of the tempest and rise superior to the cloud ; 
never will the Sun behold it in its aspiring flight, 
and take it to himself, hiding it from mortal sight 
in the blaze of his brightness ; but, lifeless and 
debased, it shall lie until the worm shall know it, 
and the vile things that crawl feed on the plumage 
of the sky. 

But to the stricken soul, to the debased spirit, 
to overtlirown manhood there is a hope. The Gos- 
pel speaks, and that which had no power to rise is 
lifted. Life comes back to it. Strength throbbing 
with power ; vigor which beats with full vein ; as- 
pirations which outsoar the eagle's flight, leaving 
the sun beneath tliem ; hope that contents itself 
with nothing that is not heaven ; and a purpose 
which bears the buffets of evil fortune without a 
murmur, which keeps an even pace against a torna- 
do's pressure, — all these come to the soul through 
Christ, renewing the marred features until the 
original loveliness appears, as tints in colored mar- 
ble grow under the smoothing-plane, and man re- 
sumes once more the long-lost look of God. 
men and women without the power of the Gos- 
pels in your hearts, how much you lose ! Give up 
your wealth ; fling beauty aside, yea, fling it from 
you until you shall be as was the Man of Sorrows, 
in whom men saw no comeliness ; part with posi- 
tion and all that vanity craves ; — only have the 
power of God's transforming love in your hearts, 



272 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

and your wealtli shall be beyond the riches of men. 
and your royalty beyond the royalty of kings. 

People talk about religion being a restraint upon 
men. And so it is in one sense, — but it is a very 
small sense indeed. There are in man certain de- 
structive tendencies, — passions which make him 
their sport, appetites which coerce Ms better judg- 
ment, — and religion puts a curb upon these and 
reins them in. But religion has other and larger 
uses than this. Fetters and cords and gags do not 
represent it. It directs more than it dams up ; it 
germinates more than it stamps out. God purifies 
the soul very much as you air your rooms. You 
do not keep the doors and windows shut, and throw 
in chemicals, trusting that they will master and 
renew the vitiated 'element ; you open all the doors 
and windows and ventilators, and let God's pure 
air flow in from without, — a strong, crisp current 
through every door and window, and thus you 
purify your chambers. So it is with God. The 
purifying influences come from without, not from 
within. He throws open all the windows of the 
soul, — the windows of feeling, of impulse, of imag- 
ination, of purpose, — and sends a strong current of 
vitalizing grace sweeping through them, until every 
apartment of our nature is reoxygenized and made 
healthy and bracing. Negatives do not express 
religious duty. The " shall nots " are less frequent 
than the " shalls." I love to think that religious 



THE MORAL CONDITION OF BOSTON. 273 

life is the growth of all the faculties, and not a slow 
strangulation of them. As I look at it, religion 
no more cramps a man than wings do a bird or 
fins do a fish. It supplies liim with . propelling 
power. A Christian man should be an active 
man, — active in eveiy faculty, every fibre vibrat- 
ing with energy. Great injury has been done 
religion by allowing people to regard it as a mild 
form of slavery, a kind of bondage to goodness, 
in which people consented to be tied up that 
they might not hurt themselves or others. But 
there is no such religion as this, — at least in the 
New Testament. The Gospel Christ taught and 
Paul preached is a gospel of liberty and not of 
slavery. The more that faith in Christ works out 
its legitimate effect in man, the more is he eman- 
cipated, the freer he becomes. You all see this. 
You can each of you recall, probably, some per- 
son in slavery to some particular form of sin, — 
some habit, some appetite. Take the appetite for 
alcoholic liquor. Let it once get its fingers fairly 
around a man's throat, and it rarely lets go un- 
til it flings him aside as a corpse. When the 
man is black in the face, and his blood chilled 
forever, and his body fit only for the worm, then 
it quits its hold, but rarely before. While he 
lives the man is the slave of his sinful habit. To 
it he gives his earnings, his time, his health, the 
clothes on his back, even his children's bread, — all 

12* R 



274 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

go to gratify tlie cravings of liis appetite. But let 
the grace of God come into his soul, and his fetters 
are broken ; he stands disenthralled and erect, a 
free man. 

I tell you, friends, there is hope for all. Christ 
is able to save even unto the uttermost. Only 
make the Gospels known, only preach them so 
that men can understand them, only keep this 
radiant sun in the heavens, and the spiritual nature 
of men must blossom. You might as well charge 
the swelling buds in June not to open and grow 
fragrant wdien the beams of the sun are prying 
open all their leaves, and the south- wind is forcing 
itself in among the petals, as to forbid men to flower 
out in goodness under the influence of the Gos- 
pels. 

I preach the message of God to you, therefore, 
not with threats. I tilt against your fears with no 
spear-like denunciation. The message I am set to 
carry to my fellow-men is not one of terror, but of 
glad news. I know that God is inflexible in jus- 
tice toward those who persist in wickedness. I 
know that His wrath, when kindled, can burn to 
the low^est hell ; but fear is not a gospel motive, 
terror is not a substitute for love. He does not 
drive men, He guides. He does not threaten. He 
invites. Christ did not come to condemn the 
world, but that the world through Him might be 
saved. This has been greatly overlooked. The 



THE MORAL COXDITION OF BOSTON. 275 

New Testament has often been preached as a book 
of legislation rather than of salvation. Christ has 
been held up as one who is to judge the world 
rather than one who is to save the world. This is 
a horrible perversion of His mission. I present 
God to you, this evening, not in His judicial but 
His paternal relations to men. You are all His 
children ; erring and disobedient some of you, but 
children still. His heart is full of love for you. 
His face is not averted in anger. He lifts the 
light of it upon you at this moment. Some of 
you, perhaps, are discouraged. He says, " My child, 
be of good courage, I am with you always." Some 
of you are weak and weary ; you have walked far 
and borne much. He says, " My child, see, thou 
art weak, but I am strong ; thou art small, but I 
am vast ; come to my arms, lay yourself on my 
bosom, and I will carry you the rest of the way." 
Some of you are in grief ; the voices of the de- 
parted are ever in your ears, their faces ever before 
your eyes ; you cannot at times eat or sleep because 
of your weeping. " Hush," He says, " subdue your 
grief, and live your days in hope and joy. Heaven 
is large, and its ministrations are abundant. The 
departed are with me ; when you meet them again, 
you shall have them forever." And some of you 
are far off, rebellious and bitter. But does He pur- 
sue you in wrath, does He smite you ? Ah no ; 
the rain falls on the just and the unjust. He calls 



276 MUSIC-HALL SERMONS. 

to you, He sends me as His messenger out after 
you, with the command, " Tell them to come back, 
yea, every one. I would not that any should per- 
ish. Tell them all to come back to their Father's 
love and home." Let this be the closing utter- 
ance, the last words, probably, which, as a preacher 
of the Gospel, I shall ever address to you from 
this platform. In weariness and weakness often, 
amid doubts of purpose and of plan, in narrowness 
of conception, in feebleness of expression, I have 
striven for these twelve nights to teach and in- 
spire, to direct and encourage you. Through them 
all God has been with us on our right hand and 
on our left ; and at times I have seen, or thought 
I saw, among us the Presence which is ineffable. 
Believing most firmly in the power of the Gos- 
pel to save, in the efhcacy of the Blood to atone, 
in the willingness of God to forgive, in His love 
for the lowly and the lost, I launch this voice into 
the air ; I send it out over the city — would that 
it might reach eveiy heart and every ear ! — 
" Come back, all ye who have wandered from 
virtue, — come back to your Father's love and 
home." 

THE END. 



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